How Does the “Staking” Mechanism in PoS Create New Economic Incentives for Validators?

Staking requires validators to lock up a significant amount of the native cryptocurrency as collateral. This collateral acts as a security deposit, aligning the validator's economic interest with the network's health.

The validator is rewarded with newly minted tokens and transaction fees (including MEV) for proposing and attesting to blocks. Conversely, they can be penalized (slashed) for malicious behavior, such as double-signing or downtime.