Liquid staking essential for crypto treasuries to surpass ETF yields, Lido executive claims
According to Lido's head of institutional relations, cryptocurrency treasury firms must adopt liquid staking strategies to deliver superior performance compared to staked Ether exchange-traded funds.
Corporate treasury firms holding Ether will likely need to embrace liquid staking alongside other active yield-generation strategies to provide investors with returns that exceed what's already accessible through publicly traded Ether products, according to Kean Gilbert, head of institutional relations at Lido, who spoke with Cointelegraph during ETHCC 2026.
The liquid staking mechanism enables Ether (ETH) token holders to stake their assets while simultaneously obtaining a transferable derivative token that remains deployable across various decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
According to Gilbert, approaches including utilizing ETH as collateral and executing borrowing strategies against those holdings may enable treasury operations to produce superior yields compared to passive staking investment vehicles.
Staked ETH products currently available on US exchanges include the REX-Osprey ETH + Staking ETF, which debuted in September 2025, alongside Grayscale's Ethereum Staking ETF and Ethereum Staking Mini ETF, plus BlackRock's iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF, which made its debut on March 12.
Public disclosures from issuers reveal varying staking economics among different Ether products, which complicates straightforward yield comparisons. According to Grayscale's ETHE page, net staking rewards stood at 2.26% as of April 6, whereas Grayscale's ETH page indicated 2.56% as of April 2. Meanwhile, native ETH staking was generating approximately 2.72% on an annual basis, based on data from Staking Rewards.
Nevertheless, Jimmy Xue, co-founder and chief operating officer of quantitative yield platform Axis, explained that Ether treasury companies don't necessarily have to surpass staked Ether products in terms of headline yield figures since they represent fundamentally different investment structures.
"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 across opportunities as they arise."
According to Xue, the mNAV premium that investors are willing to pay demonstrates their trust in management's capability to actively deploy that treasury capital, noting that basis trading represents a significant yield source for these treasury companies.
Public filings show liquid staking adoption
Publicly available regulatory disclosures reveal that multiple Ether treasury companies are employing staking or strategies related to liquid staking, although the extent of detail provided differs from one company to another.
Sharplink Gaming, which holds the position of second-largest corporate holder of Ether, has accumulated 14,516 ETH (approximately $30.8 million) in staking rewards through March. According to a March 1 filing submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company obtained 33% of these rewards through liquid staking mechanisms and 66% via native staking approaches.
The company reported a net loss of $734 million for 2025, with the substantial loss attributed primarily to the severe cryptocurrency market decline experienced during the latter half of the year.
BTCS Inc., ranked as the 10th-largest Ether treasury company measured by returns, has similarly staked a portion of its Ether portfolio using the liquid staking protocol Rocket Pool. Based on a July 2025 SEC filing, from the company's total holdings of 29,122 ETH, it has deployed 4,160 ETH ($8.8 million) through liquid staking via Rocket Pool nodes.
Cointelegraph has reached out to BitMine, SharpLink and The Ether Machine requesting comment regarding the function of liquid staking within their operational strategies.