What activating and deactivating stake mean
Solana does not let stake start or stop earning immediately. Newly delegated SOL spends one epoch in warmup before it counts, and SOL you undelegate spends one epoch in cooldown before you can move it. Each epoch is ~26 hours, so both figures describe an epoch, not a day — which is why consecutive days on this chart repeat the same value.
What the net change does and does not tell you
Against a staked supply of 436.42M SOL, that is 0.28% entering and 0.44% leaving each epoch — the scale that matters, because a million SOL sounds large and is not against this pool.
The amount staked and the share of supply it represents move independently: new SOL is minted whether or not it is delegated, so the total can climb while the share falls. Both are read from the staked supply itself. The figures above measure stake in transit rather than stake added, so they do not add up to this change over any interval.
A negative net is not the same as people leaving Solana. Stake moving from one validator to another is deactivated and then activated again, so re-delegation shows up on both sides of this chart and cancels out only in aggregate.
What this means when you stake or unstake
Practically: a deposit starts earning at the next epoch boundary, and an exit takes an epoch before the SOL is liquid again. Neither waiting period charges a fee, and neither is affected by how busy the chart above looks. The staking guide walks through the deposit, the unstaking guide through the exit, and the calculator shows what the position earns in between.
Start earning at the next epoch
Stake.Cake charges 0% commission — the warmup is the only thing between a deposit and full rewards.
FAQ
Is deactivating stake the same as unstaking?
Deactivating is the first half of it. The stake stops earning the moment you deactivate and the cooldown starts, but the SOL is not back in your wallet until you send a separate withdrawal transaction. Stake left deactivated and unwithdrawn earns nothing for as long as it sits there.
Why does stake take an epoch to start earning?
Because Solana only changes stake state at epoch boundaries. To pay out an epoch it must first be settled who was delegated to whom for it, so a delegation arriving mid-epoch waits for the next boundary. The same rule applies on the way out — those two waiting queues are exactly what this chart counts.
Where does this data come from?
It is aggregated from on-chain Solana stake account state, per epoch, in SOL. Deactivating stake is expressed as a negative number so the two components add up to the net change rather than to a meaningless total.