Highest staking yield, live validator net APR across 7 PoS chains

Net yield is the actual APR a staker earns on a given validator, computed as `gross_apr × uptime_fraction`. Gross APR is what the chain's reward formula would pay if the validator never missed a slot; uptime is the fraction of slots the validator actually voted/produced in the measurement window. For Solana the bench uses Stakewiz's `total_apy` for gross (which already includes Jito MEV tips), multiplied by the validator's reported uptime. For Hyperliquid it uses `predictedApr.day` × `stats[day].uptimeFraction` from `/info validatorSummaries`. The unit is basis points (1% = 100 bps) to stay consistent with the rest of OpenChainBench.

Two reasons. (1) ~42 of the top 200 tracked Solana validators are currently emitting 0% APY, some have commission set to 100% (operator takes everything, delegator gets 0), others have zero leader slots in the current epoch (no block-production rewards earned during the measurement window). These are legitimate, transient states that count toward the chain's median by definition. (2) Average validator commission on the tracked set is ~24%, which already eats into the headline 'staking APY' number quoted by chain marketing. If you want 'yield I'd get if I picked a sane validator', look at the per-validator gauges or wait for the leaderboard to expose p75+, those numbers cluster around 5.9-6.0% net.

Yes, the direction is what it looks like: Solana ~5.6% > Hyperliquid ~2.2%. Three reasons. (1) Hyperliquid pays staking rewards in HYPE only, there is no inflation analogue to Solana's ~5% protocol issuance. (2) No MEV layer exists at the validator level (the centralised sequencer captures order-flow value at protocol level, not validator level), so there's no MEV-tip surcharge to add. (3) The reward pool is split across ~30 validators evenly when active, so per-validator APR is structurally flat, top operators all sit at ~225 bps with very tight spread. A staker chooses a Hyperliquid validator on uptime / jail risk / governance alignment, not on yield differentiation.

MEV is INCLUDED in the gross APR figure, not subtracted from it. For Solana, Stakewiz's `total_apy` already folds Jito MEV tips into the headline APR by design, this bench inherits that aggregation rather than re-computing. The `ocb_validator_mev_share_bps` gauge is exposed separately for transparency (so you can see e.g. 'Helius's 600 bps APR is 80 bps MEV + 520 bps staking') but it does NOT get subtracted to produce a 'staking-only' number. For Hyperliquid, no separate MEV layer exists at validator level (the centralised sequencer captures value upstream), so the MEV gauge is reported as 0 by convention. This is the same `net_yield` definition every staking dashboard uses, Stakewiz, Solana Beach, Hyperliquid Stats, etc.

Two legitimate causes, both visible in the live data. (1) Commission set to 100%: the validator operator has configured their vote account to route 100% of staking rewards to themselves, so delegators receive 0%. This is common for operators running their own treasury stake (Binance, exchange custody, etc.) where 'delegators' is a fiction, there's only the operator's own SOL. (2) Zero leader slots in the current epoch: Solana's leader schedule is stake-weighted but randomised per epoch, so a small validator can statistically draw zero slots in a given ~2-day epoch and earn zero block-production rewards. Both states are transient: commission can be lowered, leader slots cycle every epoch. The bench surfaces them as 0 rather than filtering because they ARE part of the live validator set.

It is the network-average consensus-layer APR for a 32 ETH solo validator, computed from the beacon chain spec reward formula on the live total effective balance published by ultrasound.money. It covers attestation, proposer and sync committee rewards in expectation, at 100% participation (realized participation runs about 99.5%, a drift of under 2 bps). It EXCLUDES execution-layer tips and MEV, so a proposer running MEV-Boost earns more in practice. It is NOT a liquid staking APY: Lido or Coinbase quotes are product rates with their own fee schedules netted out. Ethereum ships as one aggregate series rather than per-validator gauges because the active set is about 1M validator indices and consensus rewards are uniform per 32 ETH increment, so the network average equals the solo validator nominal APR. Per-validator Ethereum gauges and MEV inclusion require beacon-node or relay ingestion and stay on the v2 roadmap.

The two sources this bench treats as canonical, both free and key-less. Stakewiz (`api.stakewiz.com`) is a community-maintained Solana validator analytics service that ingests on-chain vote-account state, commission history, leader schedule and reward distribution, then publishes a clean `/validators` JSON with `total_apy` already computed as a 30-epoch trailing estimate. Jito Kobe (`kobe.mainnet.jito.network`) is Jito Labs' public API exposing per-validator MEV-tip earnings broken down by epoch. Most Solana staking dashboards (Solana Beach, Marinade UI, etc.) consume one or both, so numbers quoted across sites usually trace back to the same upstream; this bench polls them directly every 5 minutes and republishes the per-validator gauges.

The full active set is ~3000 validators, but stake concentrates hard: the top 200 by activated stake hold ~90% of staked SOL by USD value, which is why this bench tracks exactly that cohort (also a Prometheus cardinality budget: ~1.6k series for 200 validators vs ~21k for the full set). For a delegator the practical universe is smaller still, the long tail of <1k-SOL validators has negligible delegate base and statistically draws few leader slots per epoch. The chain median shown here reflects where real delegated stake sits; the cap is a knob that lifts to 500 or 1000 if Prom capacity grows.

By delegated stake, the largest Solana validators tracked here are Figment, Helius, Binance Staking, Jupiter and Ledger by Figment, and their net yields cluster around the chain's modal ~6% rather than the median 5.13% (which is dragged by validators currently at 0% APY). This bench is neutral: it ranks measured net yield (`gross APR × uptime`, MEV included), takes no commercial placement, and does not rank custodians or liquid staking products. Pick on the per-validator gauges: sane commission (not 100%), sustained uptime, and enough stake to draw leader slots, then note that yields among healthy validators differ by tens of bps, so decentralization is a defensible tiebreaker.