BlackRock has basically led the way in a major early move to a new iShares Staked Ethereum ETF, by a Delaware name registration filed on Wednesday. Daniel Schweiger, managing director at BlackRock and also the person responsible for the company’s first iShares Ethereum fund registration in late 2023, submitted. So, the name registration in itself is not a launch confirmation. Still, it is generally considered the very first public signal that a new exchange-traded fund is about to be created.
The Delaware filing is after Nasdaq’s revised 19b-4 proposal in July, which was a request for the addition of the staking feature in BlackRock’s current iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) to get approval. In response to this, other asset managers like 21Shares and Grayscale have been urging for similar changes to catch up with the competition that has been heating up in the regulated Ethereum staking products for the U.S. ETF market. Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, said the filing for a new iShares staking fund is “coming soon,” which is a strong indication that BlackRock is making progress.
Ethereum staking has been instrumental in the development of the ETF market, where the issuers have to find ways to offer yield-generating exposure. According to SoSoValue, BlackRock’s leading Ethereum ETF, ETHA, currently has almost $11.5 billion of assets under management as of Nov. 17. The fund was hit with a $165 million cash-out last week during a broad market sell-off; however, it still maintains a position as the largest U.S. Ethereum ETF.
Despite the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopting a more liberal stance on crypto-linked ETFs during the second Trump administration, only a handful of products with staking rewards have been given the green light. In October, Grayscale was allowed to enable staking for its U.S. Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHE) and Ethereum Mini Trust ETF (ETH), thus making them the first spot-market funds registered under the Securities Act of 1933 to turn on staking payouts.
Besides that, there were new developments under the Investment Company Act of 1940, with REX-Osprey inaugurating a Solana staking ETF in July and an ETH staking fund in September. BlackRock’s Head of Digital Assets, Robert Mitchnick, had earlier signaled that ETF-enabled Ethereum staking is likely to be “the next phase” of the industry, thus highlighting the institutional demand for yield-generating crypto products.
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