Key Takeaways:
Corporate treasuries holding Ether (ETH) must look to liquid staking to beat the yields from at least four new staked Ether ETFs, according to a Lido executive speaking at ETHCC 2026.
"A staked ETH ETF is a passive vehicle. A DAT trading at a meaningful mNAV premium is promising something a passive ETF structurally cannot deliver, which is active, dynamic deployment of spot inventory," Jimmy Xue, co-founder of quantitative yield platform Axis, said in comments on the matter.
Recently launched products from BlackRock, Grayscale, and REX-Osprey offer passive staking yields between 2.26 percent and 2.56 percent, according to issuer disclosures from early April. This compares to a native ETH staking yield of approximately 2.72 percent annually, as data from Staking Rewards shows.
The comments highlight a growing competition between passive TradFi investment products and active DeFi yield strategies, forcing corporate treasuries to justify their management by generating higher, risk-adjusted returns on their ETH holdings on Ethereum.
Lido’s head of institutional relations, Kean Gilbert, told Cointelegraph that strategies such as using liquid staking derivatives as collateral could help treasury companies generate higher returns than these new passive products. Liquid staking allows ETH holders to stake their tokens while receiving a liquid staking token (LST) that can be used elsewhere in DeFi.
Public filings confirm this strategy is already in use. Sharplink Gaming, the second-largest corporate Ether holder, generated 14,516 ETH (about $30.8 million) in staking rewards as of March, with 33 percent of those rewards coming from liquid staking, according to a March 1 SEC filing.
Similarly, BTCS Inc., another major Ether treasury company, has staked 4,160 ETH ($8.8 million) through the liquid staking protocol Rocket Pool, representing about 14 percent of its total 29,122 ETH holdings, a July 2025 filing showed. The increasing adoption of these strategies by public companies could drive more capital into DeFi protocols like Lido and Rocket Pool as the hunt for yield intensifies.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
