BlackRock’s new iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF, trading under ETHB, brings Ethereum staking into an ETF structure. The fund is BlackRock’s first crypto product to combine spot ether exposure with staking rewards, and it is set up to stake roughly 70% to 95% of its ETH holdings through professional validator operators.
Figment handles part of the validator stack
Figment is one of the core node operators supporting ETHB, alongside Galaxy Digital and Attestant. Its job covers Ethereum validation infrastructure tied to the fund’s staked ether, including block proposals, attestations, and network security functions. Rather than building and running the validator system in-house, BlackRock is relying on specialist firms to manage that layer. The structure lets regulated investors access staking income through an ETF while keeping the technical execution outside BlackRock’s internal operating stack.
Launch assets reached about $100 million to $107 million
According to multiple data providers cited in the report, ETHB came to market with about $100 million to $107 million in initial assets and recorded roughly $15.5 million in first-day trading volume. Under normal conditions, the fund stakes most of the ether it holds and distributes around 82% of gross staking rewards to shareholders. The current implied annualized yield is about 3.1%. BlackRock and its partners keep the remainder as fees. The management fee is set at 0.25%, with a temporary reduction to 0.12% on the first $2.5 billion in assets for the first year.
ETF wrapper links institutional capital to Ethereum validation
The product points to a new route for traditional finance to access Ethereum’s proof-of-stake economy: holding spot ETH through an ETF and earning yield from on-chain validation at the same time. For Ethereum, ETHB adds another institutional source of staked capital to the validator set. The report said ETH was trading around $2,201, up roughly 6.8% over 24 hours, with a low near $2,041.70 and a high just above $2,200. Trading volume was close to $27.76 billion. With staked ether already at record highs on-chain, a yield-bearing BlackRock ETF adds another large holder to that locked supply base.