Staking & Mining
Staking and mining are how blockchains pay the people who secure them. Proof-of-work miners trade electricity for hashrate; proof-of-stake validators lock tokens as collateral against bad behavior. These terms cover the rewards, the slashing penalties, the halving cycles that set long-term issuance, and the airdrops projects use to bootstrap early users.
AirdropAn airdrop is a free distribution of tokens, usually to a set of early users of a protocol or blockchain.Delegated StakingDelegated staking lets token holders assign their stake to a validator without running infrastructure themselves.HalvingA halving is a scheduled reduction in a proof-of-work blockchain's block reward.HashrateHashrate is the rate at which a mining network computes hashes per second.MiningMining is the process of competing to produce the next block on a proof-of-work blockchain by solving computational puzzles.Mining PoolA mining pool is a cooperative of miners who combine hashrate and share block rewards proportional to contribution.SlashingSlashing is the penalty mechanism in proof-of-stake consensus: a validator that misbehaves — double-signs, violates surround-voting rules, or otherwise prova…StakingStaking is the act of locking tokens as collateral to participate in a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism or to earn protocol rewards.