Ethereum staking continues to mature, and institutions with significant ETH holdings are increasingly looking for secure and yield-competitive strategies. At Chorus One, we are building solutions that combine simplicity, flexibility, and performance – allowing our clients to participate in Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem without added complexity.
Our latest staking product leverages Lido stVaults to deliver two complementary strategies:
This dual approach positions Chorus One to better meet the diverse needs of institutional clients – whether they value simplicity, capital efficiency, or higher returns.
Several factors make stVaults and stETH a natural fit for our institutional staking product:
Security remains foundational to our approach. We are actively testing vanilla and looped staking strategies on testnets to validate reliability, scalability, and client safety.
If custom smart contract development is required, we will follow strict transparency standards by publishing fully public audits. Institutions can also review our broader security framework in our Chorus One Handbook and security documentation.
By integrating stVaults into our staking product suite, Chorus One is unlocking several benefits for institutions:
The launch of stVault-based staking products marks a significant step forward in Chorus One’s institutional offering. By combining the liquidity of stETH with the flexibility of stVaults, we are empowering institutions to access yield opportunities that are both secure and scalable, without unnecessary dependencies.
At Chorus One, we believe the future of ETH staking lies in making institutional participation seamless, capital-efficient, and reward-optimized. stVaults are a key part of that vision.
At Chorus One, we’ve always believed that staking should be both secure and seamless. Over the past few years, we’ve partnered with leading institutions like Ledger, Utila, and Cactus to bring institutional-grade staking solutions to users worldwide. These partnerships have largely relied on SDK-based integrations, which, while effective, still require a fair amount of development and testing on the client side.
Now, we’re taking simplicity to the next level with the Chorus One Earn Widget.
The Chorus One Earn Widget is a ready-to-integrate staking portal designed to be embedded directly into a partner’s website or app. Built on an iFrame, it allows platforms to offer staking products to their users almost instantly: no heavy lifting, no lengthy development cycles.
With a prebuilt user interface, wallet connection support, and built-in transaction flows, partners can launch staking services quickly, while users can start staking assets and earning rewards without leaving the familiar environment of their preferred app or platform.
For many of our partners, speed matters, and we have seen this accelerate in recent weeks, with some institutions needing to quickly onboard a new provider for staking in days. Take any leading FinTech app, for example, which is preparing to add staking–while SDK integrations provide full customization, FinTech apps and similar partners want a plug-and-play solution that minimizes the technical overhead of launching a new product.
The Chorus One Widget solves this by offering:
In short, the widget makes staking as easy as adding a YouTube video to your site.
The widget is designed for:
By removing development and testing hurdles, the widget opens the door for a wider range of institutions to integrate staking into their products.
The Chorus One Earn Widget comes with a set of functional and non-functional features designed to ensure security, scalability, and usability:
For partners, the widget reduces integration time dramatically while offering a customizable, secure, and scalable solution. It fits neatly into existing workflows and comes with implementation guides and support from the Chorus One team.
For end users, the widget ensures a familiar, intuitive interface to stake assets and track rewards, without navigating away from the apps and platforms they already trust.
The launch of the Chorus One Earn Widget represents a strategic step toward expanding our product suite which includes the Chorus One SDK and dApp, and reaching a broader client base. By lowering the barrier to entry for staking integration, we’re enabling more institutions, both traditional and decentralized, to offer their users access to rewards and participation in proof-of-stake networks.
Our goal is clear: make staking simple for everyone. Whether through SDKs for tailored integrations or the plug-and-play widget for faster rollouts, Chorus One is committed to delivering best-in-class staking infrastructure to meet our partners’ diverse needs.
Institutional crypto treasuries are entering a new phase. In the first wave, treasurers allocated to Bitcoin and Ethereum, focusing on long-term exposure and basic staking yields. But as on-chain infrastructure matures and liquid staking protocols like Lido and EigenLayer gain traction, a new strategy is emerging: yield stacking. By combining liquid staking tokens (LSTs), restaking mechanisms, and DeFi services, treasuries can now layer multiple sources of yield on top of the same principal, without giving up custody, transparency, or compliance controls. Treasuries that can generate 3–5% from vanilla savings and staking, can now see 6–10% using enterprise-grade tools and increasingly permissioned crypto vaults. This is Treasury 3.0: dynamic, composable, and built for capital efficiency.
The blink-and-you- will-miss- it era of single-layer staking, locking ETH or SOL for basic yield, is already giving way to yield stacking strategies that enhance capital efficiency without compromising security. Traditional staking is a great foundation, delivering around 3–5% APY on assets like Ethereum and Solana. Adding liquid staking, using tokens such as stETH or mSOL, which grant liquidity and composability for use across DeFi protocols, add another 3+%. For example, Lido’s stETH, for instance, currently yields 2.7-3.3% APY on secured ETH while enabling seamless DeFi integration across 90+ platforms. Next comes restaking, via platforms like EigenLayer, which allows existing staked (or liquid-staked) ETH to secure additional protocols, adding an extra ~.50% yield while leveraging Ethereum’s security layer. Each layer compounds yield while keeping treasuries in control via custodied wrappers, making this tactical approach highly compelling for sophisticated institutional finance teams.
Imagine a treasury that layers multiple yield strategies on the same ETH base—for example:
Stacking these rewards represents a 2x+ improvement over traditional savings or T-bill yields (~3% APY), without relinquishing principal or legacy custody frameworks. Whether a treasury opts for a conservative single-stack or a progressive full-stack deployment, the efficiency gain is clear, and easily trackable with the right tooling.
What once required bespoke tooling and manual tracking is now becoming enterprise-ready. Institutional-grade infrastructure is rapidly evolving to support yield-stacking strategies through familiar custody, validator, and reporting partners. Custodians like Coinbase Custody, Anchorage Digital, and BitGo now support liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and restaking flows, enabling treasuries to layer yield without compromising asset security. On the validator side, providers such as Chorus One, Kiln, Figment, and Renzo offer restaking and AVS onboarding services with built-in compliance and risk frameworks. And tools like Chorus One’s Rewards Reporting complete the stack by offering audit-ready reporting, wallet-level attribution, and easily exportable formats to satisfy both finance and ops teams. The combination of performance, visibility, and enterprise integration is what transforms this from a crypto-native idea into a finance-grade treasury solution.
While the opportunity is clear, executing a Treasury 3.0 strategy requires thoughtful navigation of regulatory, technical, and organizational complexity. Tax guidance remains underdeveloped, especially around restaking and liquid staking tokens (LSTs). For example, the IRS has clarified that staking rewards are taxed as ordinary income upon receipt (Rev. Rul. 2023‑14), but has yet to issue formal treatment of restaking flows or derivative tokens like stETH and LRTs. Meanwhile, Europe’s DAC8 and proposed U.S. legislation like the CLARITY Act could introduce new disclosure and compliance obligations for multi-layer yield strategies. On the operational front, risks include smart contract vulnerabilities in vaults or restaking modules, as well as composability fragility, where issues in one protocol layer (e.g., an LST depeg) could cascade through a treasury stack. To handle these requirements, institutions must update investment policies, establish clear escalation protocols, and ensure cross-functional coordination between finance, legal, and technical teams. But these are small obligations in comparison to the power of a Treasury 3.0 yield stacking strategy.
The next evolution of treasury management isn’t a future concept, it’s already unfolding across the on-chain economy. Treasury 3.0 strategies harness staking, restaking, and DeFi layers to unlock meaningful, compoundable returns which significantly outperform traditional finance tools while preserving custody, compliance, and control. With infrastructure and reporting tools maturing, these strategies are now auditable and enterprise-ready. For forward-looking finance teams, the question is no longer if to adopt these strategies, but how to operationalize them responsibly. Institutions that act now will not only drive stronger yield, they'll define the governance, compliance, and capital efficiency standards of the new digital economy.
The U.S. crypto ETF landscape is undergoing a transformative shift. The recent approval (or more accurately, no disapproval) of the REX-Osprey™ SOL + Staking ETF (ticker: SSK) marks a significant milestone, offering investors exposure to Solana (SOL) while earning yield through on-chain staking. This development signals a broader trend: the integration of staking rewards into regulated investment vehicles.
This is already a gigantic shift in SEC policy and enforcement. But what comes next? Emerging technologies like Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) and restaking protocols introduce new layers of yield that should be integrated into these traditional ETF structures. This article explores the current state of crypto ETFs, the implications of these innovations, and the regulatory considerations that lie ahead.
As we discussed previously, the launch of the REX-Osprey™ SOL + Staking ETF represents a pioneering approach to integrating staking rewards into an ETF structure. By utilizing a C-corporation that owns a Cayman-based subsidiary, the fund acquires and stakes SOL tokens, providing investors with staking yields within a regulated framework .
This structure offers a workaround to the traditional '33 Act spot ETF route, enabling faster market entry. However, it also introduces tax inefficiencies, as C-corporations are subject to corporate tax, potentially reducing the staking rewards passed on to shareholders.
As the crypto market matures, investors are increasingly looking beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum to altcoins that offer higher staking yields. However, integrating these assets into ETFs presents several challenges:
Emerging technologies like Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) and restaking protocols offer promising ways for enhancing staking yields and network security. However, they also introduce complexities that challenge traditional ETF structures.
Distributed Validator Technology (DVT):
DVT allows multiple nodes to collaboratively operate a single validator, enhancing decentralization and fault tolerance. Projects like Obol Network and SSV Network are at the forefront of this innovation.
Benefits:
Challenges:
Restaking Protocols:
Restaking allows staked assets to be used to secure additional networks or services, effectively layering staking rewards.EigenLayer is a prominent example of this approach .
Benefits:
Challenges:
The integration of advanced staking mechanisms into ETFs necessitates a clear regulatory framework. The CLARITY Act of 2025 aims to provide such a framework by delineating the responsibilities of the SEC and CFTC over digital assets.
Additionally, the IRS's Revenue Ruling 2023-14 clarifies that staking rewards are taxable when the taxpayer gains dominion and control over them. However, the application of this ruling to complex staking arrangements involving DVT and restaking remains uncertain.
ETF issuers must navigate these regulatory complexities to ensure compliance while offering innovative products that meet investor demand.
The evolution of staking ETFs represents a significant advancement in the integration of decentralized finance into traditional investment vehicles. While technologies like DVT and restaking offer enhanced yields and network security, they also introduce complexities that must be carefully managed.
As the regulatory landscape continues to evolve, collaboration among ETF issuers, technology providers, and regulators will be crucial in developing products that balance innovation with compliance.
