While many crypto investors mine in order to gain more assets, there is another option available to some investors: crypto staking.

Crypto staking involves "locking up" a portion of your cryptocurrency for a period of time as a way of contributing to a blockchain network. In exchange, stakers can earn rewards, typically in the form of additional coins or tokens.

Coins you can stake

While not every cryptocurrency can be staked, most can. For instance, DeCicco says that seven of the ten most popular current coins can be staked. Here are some examples:

Ethereum:Previously employed a PoW system, Ethereum is now moving to PoS. To stake Ethereum on your own, you'll need a minimum of 32 Ethereum to become a validator, and you'll then "be responsible for storing data, processing transactions, and adding new blocks to the blockchain," according to the Ethereum site.

Quidax token(QDX): QDX is a native token of the Quidax platform that allows you to stake 500 Qdx and above in the QDX vault to get rewards in new coins whenever they're listed on the platform without having to buy them and also get QDX airdrop whenever they're done and guess what airdrops are worth it these days, nobody wants to miss out like the aptos.

Solana: Solana, or SOL, can likewise be staked or delegated to a staking pool, assuming an investor uses a digital wallet that supports it. From there, it's a matter of selecting a validator and deciding how much you'd like to stake.

Staking rewards

There are many benefits and rewards to staking. Here are some of the most prominent:

You can earn additional tokens; This is the big one — increasing your individual stash of tokens or coins. Stakers aren't guaranteed anything, as the process of forging new blocks and doling out rewards is randomized, but stakers do "earn interest," so to speak, by staking an example is the QDX token.

Staking is less resource-intensive; Compared to crypto mining, staking consumes far fewer resources, which may help you sleep at night. Plus, staking is "servicing the ecosystem by making tokens more rare," says DeCicco, which can increase the value of your holdings.

Stakers get voting rights and participation; As mentioned, stakers are more entrenched in a specific ecosystem or blockchain network, which may give them more clout as to what happens next with a specific cryptocurrency. "It's similar to owning stock in a company. By staking, you're getting voting rights," says Welch.

Staking can be an easy way to grow holdings; For investors using an exchange, staking can be as easy as toggling a few switches to set things up. From there, they can watch their holdings grow. It's a hands-off, easy way to keep investing, while putting in very little effort.

Quick tip: The potential rewards you can reap from staking are directly influenced by how much you're willing to put at, well, stake. Keep that in mind when deciding what percentage of your holdings that you stake or delegate to a staking pool.