- Solana staking will follow Ethereum onto BNY’s custody platform, with Figment running the validators.
- No launch date, fees or reward split have been disclosed.
- BNY still has its earlier staking deal with Galaxy, and nobody has said how the two partners will divide the work.
- Staking inside regulated products is already paying measurable income to investors.
Institutions that hold Ethereum at BNY will soon be able to stake it without moving it out of the bank. On November 12, Figment said it will run validator infrastructure for BNY’s Digital Asset Custody platform. The service starts with ETH and adds SOL later, and it is open to asset managers, ETF issuers, corporations and wealth managers. Until now, staking meant opening a second custody relationship with a staking firm, and that extra step has kept much of the ETH held by traditional custodians from earning any rewards.
Figment Runs the Nodes, BNY Keeps the Coins
BNY handles custody and client servicing, and Figment supplies the validators and the protocol expertise. Ralf Roth, BNY’s Head of Digital Asset Custody, said the question institutions ask has moved from whether they can stake to how the service is delivered. Josh Deems, Figment’s Head of Revenue, said clients will stake through the platforms and servicing workflows they already use. Neither company has published a launch date, a fee schedule or any technical detail on how delegation and key management will work.
BNY can already hold SOL for clients, since its October expansion into the EU under MiCA listed bitcoin, ether, SOL and USDC among supported assets, so the Solana staking phase would add a service on top of custody that already exists.
Why Figment Never Touches Client Funds
Every Ethereum validator works with two separate credentials. The signing key lets the operator propose and confirm blocks, which is the work the network pays for. A separate withdrawal address decides where staked ETH goes when it leaves. In the standard institutional setup, the operator holds the signing key and the custodian controls the withdrawal address, so a firm like Figment can run validators without ever being able to move client funds. BNY has not confirmed it will use exactly this structure.
For most compliance teams, paperwork is the bigger hurdle. Every new counterparty brings another round of due diligence and another reporting line. When BNY first described its staking plans, it said the service would sit alongside custody, fund accounting, tax reporting and client reporting under one roof.
Galaxy Got There First in August
BNY announced that plan in its strategic collaboration with Galaxy on August 4. It named Galaxy as both a staking partner and a design partner, and said the offering was subject to regulatory review. The Figment news says nothing about whether that review is finished or how the work will be split between the two firms. Using several operators is normal, though, and Morgan Stanley’s Ethereum and Solana trusts list Figment, Galaxy and Coinbase Canada as staking providers in their filings.
Morgan Stanley and Coinbase Already Use Figment
Figment says it serves more than 1,500 institutions. On July 28, Morgan Stanley selected Figment as a staking provider for MSSE and MSOL. Both products launched with staking active from the first day of trading and expected to pass 95% of rewards through to shareholders. Coinbase Prime first offered Figment’s ETH staking in early 2024, and by October 2025 the partnership had passed $2 billion in staked assets. It has since expanded to Solana, Cardano and Sui.
$26.7 Million in Staking Income at Grayscale
Grayscale’s Ethereum Staking Mini ETF reported that figure for the first nine months of 2026 in its quarterly 10-Q filing. On September 30, the fund held $2.48 billion in ETH, and $1.99 billion of it was staked. It paid $4.11 million in cash to shareholders on October 6 and another $3.18 million on November 4, both funded by selling ETH earned as rewards.
| Who | Figure | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Grayscale ETH Staking Mini ETF | $1.99B | ETH staked out of $2.48B held September 30, 2026 |
| Solana Company (HSDT) | 5.9% | Net SOL staking yield Q3 2026, network average about 4.9% |
| Sygnum ETH Alpha Fund SP | 8-10% | Yearly target in ETH, not guaranteed Staking plus trading strategies |
| Coinbase Prime and Figment | $2B+ | Assets staked through the partnership Early 2024 to October 2025 |
Source: company filings and announcements.
Sygnum’s figure needs more context than the others. Its ETH Alpha Fund SP has been open to professional investors since November 2. The bank compares its target with the 2-3% it says staking earns alone, and the gap comes from options, arbitrage and derivatives trades that carry their own risks. Solana Company’s third-quarter results show what a treasury company can earn by running its own validator setup.
Unanswered Questions for BNY Clients
Fees, the reward split, eligible jurisdictions and regulatory sign-off are all still unknown. The deal also does not mean new buying, because most clients would likely stake ETH they already keep at BNY. An ETF issuer would also have to amend its fund documents and keep enough ETH unstaked to cover redemptions. Figment advertises slashing protection, but it has not published the terms that would apply to BNY clients.
The Solana phase raises a different liquidity question. On Solana, staked SOL becomes withdrawable at the end of the current epoch, which usually takes two to three days. Ethereum releases stake through an exit queue whose length depends on how many validators want out, and in September 2025 that queue ran past 40 days. For funds that have to pay out redemptions daily, that difference will likely decide how much of each asset custodians agree to stake.
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