Author: Nancy, PANews
As early entrants like MicroStrategy have firmly established their voice, new institutions find it difficult to replicate their market recognition and capital returns, prompting more companies to shift their focus to Ethereum. Compared to pure asset appreciation, Ethereum is opening its doors to institutions in another way, not only providing stable and sustainable on-chain returns but also allowing these institutional stakers to become 'miners' and deeply participate in ecosystem construction, accelerating the entire staking track toward compliance and scalability.
Institutions are betting on Ethereum, transitioning from asset reserves to staking as 'big miners'.
Bitcoin has set a new historical high, with its driving force shifting from retail investors to a collective push from institutions. The approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs has built a compliant bridge for Wall Street to enter; after companies like Strategy listed BTC as a financial reserve asset, they achieved significant appreciation of their paper assets, gaining high recognition from the capital market and enhancing Bitcoin's credibility as an asset allocation, thus attracting more institutions to follow suit.
However, the reserve story of Bitcoin has matured. MicroStrategy has early entry advantages, voice, and capital advantages, making its model difficult to replicate, which makes it hard for latecomers to achieve similar brand premiums and market recognition through BTC allocation. For most traditional institutions entering, allocating BTC feels more like a diversification of assets rather than a growth strategy.
A new growth point and strategic window are gradually migrating to Ethereum, with more institutions initiating ETH reserve strategies. However, in terms of reserve logic, Bitcoin and Ethereum have taken different paths.
As is well known, in Bitcoin, newly produced BTC is directly issued to miners as mining rewards. From the perspective of holding ratio, if institutions are not miners, they must continuously buy BTC to maintain their relative holding ratio from being diluted. In Ethereum, since the transition to the PoS consensus mechanism, as long as ETH is staked and participates in network validation, new ETH can be obtained as rewards. For institutions, staking ETH can hedge against the dilution risk caused by the new ETH issuance. According to data from ultrasound.money, as of July 18, 35.8 million ETH have been staked, with stakers enjoying an annualized yield of 2.8%, while non-stakers face an annualized destruction rate of about 1.4%.
That is to say, compared to waiting for appreciation after buying Bitcoin, Ethereum's reserve institutions can profit by participating in the network. Several listed companies have taken the lead, with companies such as SharpLink Gaming, BitMine, Bit Digital, and GameSquare initiating Ethereum strategic reserve attempts and seeing initial results. Among them, BitMine and Bit Digital have even shifted their strategic reserves from Bitcoin to Ethereum. For them, ETH is not just a paper asset but a productive asset for participating in the ecosystem and a pathway to becoming institutional 'miners'.
Ethereum's burning mechanism further reinforces this logic. When the Ethereum network is active (high transaction volume, high base fees), the amount of ETH burned increases. If the burned ETH exceeds the newly issued ETH, the network will enter a deflationary state. This not only enhances the scarcity of ETH but also increases the actual returns for stakers and validators, including MEV and fee income, reinforcing the intrinsic value of ETH as an asset.
It is foreseeable that as more institutions flood into the Ethereum staking market, they will no longer just be providers of capital in the market but will also take on the role of big miners.
Currently, Ethereum's strategic reserve layout is in its early stages. For companies looking to build financial influence, ETH still represents a fair competition that has not yet been monopolized.
Ethereum staking will enter the institutional era, and the staking track will welcome new opportunities.
As the Ethereum market becomes increasingly institutionalized, the staking market will also shift from being crypto-native to institution-driven, moving toward a new stage of compliance and scalability.
In addition to Ethereum's micro-strategists actively participating in staking through free reserve assets, ETF issuers are also accelerating their layout. In recent months, Ethereum spot ETF issuers, including BlackRock, Grayscale, Fidelity, and Bitwise, have submitted applications to the SEC to add staking functionality.
Once a large influx of liquidity from these ETF institutions arrives, it will further expand the market scale of Ethereum staking. According to DefiLlama data, as of July 18, the TVL of the liquid staking track on Ethereum reached $51.62 billion, approaching an all-time high, up 142.5% from the low in April.
According to Mindao, founder of dForce, Ethereum's coin-stock enterprises have two special financing conveniences. In addition to using staking rewards as cash flow to support interest-bearing financing, they can also leverage staking rewards and on-chain DeFi operations as another dimension of valuation models, potentially achieving greater premiums than pure NAV models. For instance, GameSquare is currently planning to collaborate with Dialectic to invest ETH reserves into lending, liquidity provision, and re-staking in DeFi's foundational businesses; BTCS is also utilizing Aave for DeFi lending, etc. This means that staking and other DeFi tracks may welcome a valuation reassessment.
At the same time, although institutional attitudes are gradually becoming positive, they also impose high standards on the safety, compliance, and liquidity management capabilities of protocols. Currently, several institutions have clear selection criteria for staking partners. For example, 21Shares chose Coinbase as a partner in its staking application documents, demonstrating its demands for compliance and technical reliability; SharpLink Gaming adopts a diversified cooperation approach, conducting staking business through Figment, Liquid Collective, and Coinbase. Such strategies also indicate that institutions are placing greater emphasis on risk diversification and service provider capabilities when deploying staking business, which may lead to the further marginalization of staking protocols for small and medium nodes.
At present, the Ethereum liquid staking market also shows a clear head effect. According to DefiLlama data, as of July 18, 2025, the total TVL of the liquid staking track reached $51.62 billion, close to an all-time high. Among them, Lido dominates, with a TVL exceeding $33.18 billion and a market share of over 60%, far ahead of other protocols. Binance, Rocket Pool, StakeWise, mETH Protocol, and Liquid Collective form a second tier, each with a TVL in the billion-dollar range. Other projects' TVLs are mostly in the tens of millions of dollars or even lower. In addition, Ethereum staking projects also include EigenLayer, Swell, Renzo, Puffer Finance, SSV Network, and Pendle, covering sub-tracks such as re-staking, infrastructure, and LSTfi.
From various 'MicroStrategy' accelerations to ETF issuers continuously pushing forward, the market sentiment for Ethereum has been ignited, but whether the reserve narrative can continue to support the sustained development of the staking market still requires time and practical testing.
