How much are you ACTUALLY earning on your staked tokens?

I've noticed some very misinformed comments (shock!) in the past few months here regarding rates of return on staked POS tokens. It is a hard fact of life that what you think you might be earning can be far from reality. You see, most POS chains pay you staking rewards with newly-printed tokens, which dilute the overall supply, which means that you are not earning the headline interest rate. Some POS chains are worse than others. Here is a little chart showing the real return on your investment versus the advertised/headline/nominal rate, listed from worst to best.

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*Ethereum has had negative inflation (i.e., deflationary) since January 16, 2023
(Sources: staked.us/yields and ultrasound.money)

As can be seen, Tezos has the worst real staking return, and Cardano has the 2nd worst. Currently, Polkadot has the best real return. Cosmos comes in at 2nd best. And Ethereum comes in at 3rd best. Note that Cosmos and Polkadot have very high inflation, so if you own these tokens and aren't staking them, you are doing something wrong. Also note that Ethereum has very low (i.e., currently negative) inflation, so holding ETH without staking is just fine, and you are earning a real return just by holding it. Of course, staking ETH is even better if you want a higher return.