Staking goes mainstream: what 2026 could look like for ether investors

Staking is no longer a niche add-on for ether ETH$3,106.53 investors in 2026 — it has become a defining feature of how institutions gain exposure to the cryptocurrency, shaping product design, returns and risk management across the market.

Near-term selling is constrained by staking, but coins are no longer trapped. With withdrawals running smoothly, ether now trades less like a locked-up asset and more like a yield-bearing position that investors can scale up or down as sentiment changes.

Kean Gilbert, head of institutional relations at Lido Ecosystem Foundation, says the past year laid the groundwork for institutional staked ether (stETH) adoption. The clearest signal came in December, when asset manager WisdomTree launched a staked ether exchange-traded product (ETP) using Lido's stETH, listed across major European venues including SIX, Euronext and Xetra. The product is fully staked, a design choice Gilbert believes sets the tone for what comes next.

It took more than a year and hundreds of questions from the issuer to get comfortable, Gilbert says, describing a due diligence process that involved roughly 450 queries. “A fully staked product is operationally complex - but it's the benchmark investors will increasingly expect.”

Many existing ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and ETPs keep a portion of ETH unstaked to meet liquidity and redemption requirements. Gilbert says that this approach dilutes returns. If Ethereum staking yields hover around 3%, a product that stakes only half its ETH is effectively leaving yield on the table.

“With a 50% staked ETF, you’re only earning half the reward,” he says. “If you can stake 100% and still meet T+1 or T+2 redemptions, the economics are just better.”

Europe has already shown that this is possible. Gilbert points to fully staked products using liquid staking tokens like stETH, which can meet redemption timelines while remaining fully deployed. He expects the U.S. market to follow the same path.

“What we’re seeing in Europe with products like the WisdomTree stETH ETP (LIST) is a good indication of where institutional ETH products are heading," Gilbert says.

"Fully staked structures backed by stETH reduce the need to hold large unstaked buffers for redemptions, largely because the liquidity is already there. With around $100 million of stETH liquidity executable within 2% of ETH’s redemption value, issuers can keep products fully staked without reducing staking rewards to investors,” he added.

Staking has emerged as a key way for crypto holders to generate yield from their assets, but in the U.S. it has also found itself under growing regulatory scrutiny.

U.S. regulators, especially the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), have begun drawing a clearer line between protocol-level staking (validating a proof-of-stake network) and staking services that look more like an investment product, a distinction that’s now colliding with the next phase of crypto ETFs.

“The U.S. is watching what’s happening in Europe very closely,” Gilbert says. "In the run-up to the WisdomTree launch, U.S. regulatory tone has become more comfortable with staking. I expect the process will be similar, regulators will focus less on whether staked ETFs should exist and more on how they're structured."

That shift could come into sharper focus as early as 2026. Gilbert says he’s confident a VanEck staked ether ETF using Lido will go live, with mid-summer a realistic target pending regulatory approval and the easing of recent government slowdowns. Unlike partial-stake designs, the VanEck product is expected to be fully staked from day one.

Beyond ETFs, Gilbert sees infrastructure as the bigger story. Lido v3, the protocol’s latest iteration, is designed to meet institutional needs. It allows institutional allocators to choose their node operators, custodians and even decide when, or if, to mint stETH. “That optionality is critical,” Gilbert says. “Institutions want control. They want customization. They want flexibility around liquidity and exits.”

Native staking vaults are another piece of the puzzle. In these structures, ether can be staked directly within a vault, with the option to mint and sell a liquid staking token later if liquidity is needed.

Gilbert says this approach is particularly attractive to data-driven and cost-sensitive allocators because fees are lower and the process is cleaner, especially in the U.S., where the tax treatment of liquid staking tokens is still being defined.

Underpinning all of this is diversification. Lido acts as middleware, distributing stake across roughly 800 node operators. Gilbert contrasts that with centralized exchanges, where staking may be concentrated with a single operator.

If one large operator goes offline, the impact can be significant, he says. Diversification isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a risk management requirement.

Despite ether's choppy price performance, Gilbert says institutional conviction hasn’t wavered. Net staking inflows via Lido are rising, a sign that investors are committing ETH for the long term rather than cycling in and out. “They’re not thinking in months,” he says. “They’re thinking in years.”

That long-term mindset may be the clearest signal of where staking is headed. By 2026, Gilbert expects staking, particularly liquid, fully deployed staking, to be less about experimentation and more about expectation.

“Native staking wasn't designed for liquidity,” he says. “So what we’re seeing now is institutions parking staked ETH and staying put. That tells you everything about where this market is going.”

“Looking ahead to 2026, I expect fully staked exposure to become the reference point for ETH ETFs rather than the exception," Gilbert says.

"As spot ETH ETFs mature, platforms and allocators are likely to question why a product is holding idle ETH instead of more closely reflecting Ethereum’s staking economics. Fundamentally, fully staked structures do a better job of representing how staking functions within Ethereum in practice," he added.

Read more: Ethereum’s staking queues have cleared and that changes the ETH trade