Trading term
What is Staking (ether)?
Staking means locking up ether so the Ethereum network can use it to check transactions. In return the network pays a reward in new ether, a few percent a year.
Ethereum doesn't use miners. It picks people who have locked up ether, called validators, to confirm each batch of transactions, and pays them for it. You can stake your own ether or hand it to an exchange or a fund that stakes it for you. The reward moves with how much ether is staked across the whole network. Since 6 October 2025, some US ether ETFs stake part of their ether and pay the reward to shareholders as cash each month.
For example
On 23 October 2026 Grayscale's Ethereum Staking ETF (ETHE) had 82% of its ether staked and listed a reward of 2.63% a year before costs and 2.02% after them.
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Explore Premium →Why it matters to you
Staking gives an ether fund a way to earn something on top of the price. A bitcoin fund has no such thing, so it can only compete on its fee. An ether fund that stakes can make back part of its fee, or all of it.
⚠ A staking reward doesn't cancel a high fee
ETHE pays out roughly 1.7% a year from staking and charges 2.5%. Grayscale's own Mini stakes the same way for 0.15%. Compare what's left after the fee, not the reward on its own.