Lido Exec: Ether Treasuries Must Embrace Liquid Staking to Beat ETFs

Ether treasury managers are increasingly looking beyond straightforward staking rewards to extract higher yields, with liquid staking and other active deployment strategies moving into the mainstream playbook. Speaking at ETHCC 2026, Kean Gilbert, head of institutional relations at Lido Finance, highlighted liquid staking as a pathway for treasuries to earn extra returns while maintaining exposure to ETH staking benefits.

In the United States, listed staking products for Ether have proliferated, and public disclosures show treasuries experimenting with a blend of staking approaches. The current landscape includes several exchange-traded or registered products that package staked ETH into visible yields, alongside native staking options. As investors compare these vehicles, the underlying economics remain uneven, with different structures and fees complicating apples-to-apples judgments about potential returns.

Key takeaways

• Liquid staking offers a transferable token that can be deployed elsewhere in DeFi while ETH remains staked, enabling yield-enhancing strategies beyond simple staking rewards.
• Treasury managers are weighing active deployment methods—such as posting ETH as collateral and borrowing against it—as potential sources of higher return relative to passive staking vehicles.
• Public filings show real-world adoption of liquid-staking alongside native staking, with companies reporting notable portions of rewards attributable to liquid-staking activity.
• The U.S. ETF landscape for staked ETH has grown, but reported yields vary across products, and several datasets indicate that direct yield comparisons are not straightforward.
• Analysts emphasize that actively managed treasury strategies offer potential premium through dynamic deployment, even if headline yields on ETFs don’t directly mirror on-chain staking rewards.

Active yield and the logic of liquid staking

Liquid staking, at its core, allows Ether holders to stake their assets while receiving a tradeable token representing their staked position. That token can be used across DeFi protocols, giving treasuries a path to generate additional yield without surrendering staking exposure. At ETHCC 2026, Gilbert framed liquid staking as a viable mechanism for treasury desks to pursue incremental returns by layering on additional strategies on top of the basic staking rewards.

Beyond simply staking, some treasury operations are considering using ETH as collateral to borrow against it, enabling a form of leverage that could boost overall yield if managed prudently. In practice, this means treasuries may activate a range of DeFi primitives—collateralized loans, liquidity provision, and cross- protocol basis trading—to capture returns that passive staked ETH products alone cannot deliver.

That perspective comes from Jimmy Xue, co-founder and chief operating officer of Axis, a quantitative yield platform. He adds that the premium reflected in a mutualized treasury’s market value—often described as a market net asset value or mNAV premium—signals investor confidence in a manager’s ability to deploy a treasurer’s ETH treasury across opportunities as they emerge. In his view, basis trading and related strategies can be major yield sources for treasury-oriented products, helping to bridge the gap between simple staking rewards and the full spectrum of deployed yields.

Yield figures and the ETF contrast

The current U.S. ETF lineup for staked Ether includes a set of products that publicly disclose staking economics, but direct comparisons to on-chain staking returns are not straightforward. Among notable offerings are:

• REX-Osprey ETH + Staking ETF, which launched in September 2025.
• Grayscale’s Ethereum Staking ETF and Ethereum Staking Mini ETF.
• BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF, introduced on March 12.

Issuer disclosures reveal varying fee structures and payout assumptions, which complicates simple yield comparisons. For example, Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust pages show net staking rewards around 2.26% as of April 6, while Grayscale’s ETH Staking product page lists about 2.56% as of April 2. By contrast, on-chain native ETH staking yields have hovered around 2.7% to 2.8% per year according to data from Staking Rewards. The discrepancy underscores how ETF mechanics—management fees, hedges, and the timing of reward accrual—shape reported yields even when the underlying staking economics are similar.

As Xue noted, the real value proposition of an actively managed treasury is not simply the headline yield but the ability to deploy capital from spot inventory across opportunities as they arise. This view aligns with the broader market trend of treasury desks seeking to convert passive staking into diversified, yield-enhancing activity through liquid staking and related strategies.

Glass‑door into real-world adoption: Sharplink and BTCS

Public disclosures provide a rare window into how Ether treasuries are actually deploying liquid-staking strategies. Sharplink Gaming, the second-largest Ether holder by reported holdings, disclosed that it had staked 14,516 ETH as of March, generating roughly 30.8 million dollars in staking rewards. Of those rewards, about one-third were attributed to liquid staking, with the remaining two-thirds stemming from native staking, according to a March 1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It’s worth noting that Sharplink’s broader 2025 results showed a material net loss—about $734 million—driven by the downturn in the crypto market during the year’s latter half. The filing provides a tangible backdrop to the tension between mark-to-market losses and staking yield, a dynamic that treasury desks must manage in real time.

BTCS Inc., ranked among the larger Ether treasuries by returns, has also integrated liquid staking into its program. The company holds 29,122 ETH and has liquid-staked 4,160 ETH through Rocket Pool nodes, a figure disclosed in a July 2025 SEC filing. That mix illustrates how treasuries blend native staking with liquid staking to diversify revenue streams and preserve liquidity while maintaining exposure to Ether’s yield potential.

Market observers have approached these disclosures with caution, recognizing that each firm’s structure—and the data they publish—reflects unique risk profiles, governance practices, and fee frameworks. Yet the trend is clear: treasury operations are increasingly reporting and quantifying liquid-staking activity as a meaningful component of total yield generation, rather than treating it as a separate, marginal strategy.

Where the space goes from here

As more Ether treasury players disclose their strategies, the debate over what constitutes the best approach will intensify. The ETF route provides visibility and regulatory clarity for investors seeking traditional, paper-traded exposure to staked ETH; liquid staking and other active yield methods offer potential upside through more dynamic management, albeit with higher complexity and counterparty considerations. The field is at a point where the lines between passive exposure and active treasury management are increasingly blurred, and investors are paying attention to who can consistently convert ETH into productive capital deployments.

ETHCC 2026 underscored that the conversation around liquid staking is transitioning from niche experimentation to a standard item on treasuries’ flight plans. For many market participants, the critical question is not only whether liquid staking can outperform passive staking on a headline basis but whether treasury managers can reliably manage risk and liquidity while pursuing higher, more diversified yields.

Looking ahead, investors and builders should watch several developments: the pace at which more treasuries disclose liquid-staking activity; how ETF providers adjust for complexities in yield reporting and fee structures; and how risk management frameworks evolve as treasuries deploy capital across collateralized and leverage-based strategies. If the past year offers a guide, the next chapter of Ether treasury management will hinge on transparent disclosures, prudent risk-taking, and the ability to translate sophisticated yield engineering into durable, risk-adjusted returns.

As the market weighs these approaches, one certainty remains: the sophistication of Ether treasuries is rising, and liquid staking is no longer a niche feature but a core instrument in the ongoing quest to turn ETH in all its forms into productive capital.

This article was originally published as Lido Exec: Ether Treasuries Must Embrace Liquid Staking to Beat ETFs on Crypto Breaking News – your trusted source for crypto news, Bitcoin news, and blockchain updates.