BlackRock to skim 18% of staked Ethereum ETF rewards from investors — and ETHB exits could take weeks
BlackRock has sharpened the staking posture for its iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB), outlining a plan to keep most of the fund’s ETH staked and earning rewards rather than held in custody.
In its latest amended filing, the sponsor said that under normal market circumstances, it would seek to keep 70% to 95% of the fund’s ETH staked.
The remainder would sit in what it calls a Liquidity Sleeve, an unstaked buffer designed to handle day-to-day creations, redemptions, and expenses.
The change clarifies the product’s intent. ETHB packages spot ETH exposure into an exchange-traded fund while also incorporating Ethereum staking within the same ETF structure.
By embedding staking, the product moves closer to a carry-oriented strategy in which yield forms a core component of expected returns.
Staking ambition meets ETF liquidity math
ETHB is structured to issue and redeem shares in 40,000 share baskets.
The trust primarily holds ETH in custody and uses a prime execution agent, Coinbase, to facilitate staking through approved validator arrangements.
The goal is to keep the majority of ether working while preserving the basic ETF promise, shares that can be created and redeemed in a predictable way.
That promise becomes more difficult when most of the portfolio is staked. Staked EtherEUM is still an on-chain asset, but the process of putting it to work and pulling it back out runs on Ethereum’s rules, not Wall Street’s settlement expectations.
The filing addresses that tension by formalizing a liquidity plan alongside the 95% staking target.
The sponsor said it intends to maintain a Liquidity Sleeve of 5%-30% of unstaked ETH, sizing it dynamically based on expected flows and network conditions.
If the buffer is depleted during heavy redemptions, BlackRock contemplates using cash in lieu of redemptions, and it also describes the possibility of delayed settlement for in-kind redemptions in stressed scenarios.
That is a technical point with a practical meaning for arbitrage. Staking introduces a liquidity clock into the mechanism intended to keep an ETF’s market price aligned with the value of its holdings.
For investors used to thinking of ETFs as clean plumbing, the filing is a reminder that this product is trying to do two jobs at once. It must behave like an ETF, even as it operates a staking book that keeps most of its ETH deployed.
The queue turns staking into time to yield
Ethereum staking is not instant. Validators enter and exit through rate-limited queues that are designed to protect consensus stability.
ETHB’s filing makes that protocol design a headline risk factor because it directly affects when the fund can begin earning rewards on newly deposited ether.
The prospectus notes that staking activation requires joining an activation queue and then waiting an additional four epochs (about 25 minutes) before rewards begin accruing. It also lists a maximum activation throughput of roughly 57,600 ETH per day.
As of Feb. 5, 2026, the filing cited an activation queue of roughly four million ETH, which would take approximately 70 days.
If ETHB experiences a surge of inflows and attempts to stake the bulk of newly deposited tokens, a meaningful portion of the assets could remain in line for weeks before producing staking rewards.
That delay is a material structural feature for a product designed to keep 70% to 95% of its assets staked. It introduces a ramp-up period in which the fund is allocated for staking but has yet to generate staking rewards.
The document also spells out the mechanics on the way out.
It outlines exit and withdrawal steps that include an exit delay, a withdrawability delay of approximately 27 hours, and a withdrawal sweep that can take approximately 7 to 10 days. It adds that the process can take weeks to months during periods of congestion.
Those constraints matter most in the scenarios ETFs are built to withstand: fast price moves and shifting flows.
Investors can buy and sell shares throughout the day, but the fund’s ability to adjust its stake position or restore its liquidity sleeve after large flows is constrained by the network’s queues and timing.
The cost of turning protocol yield into a regulated wrapper
ETHB’s filing also makes the economics of staking inside an ETF explicit.
The trust will pay a Staking Fee, which includes remuneration for the sponsor and a share for the prime execution agent, including amounts payable to staking providers.
As of the prospectus date, the filing stated that those components constitute 18% of the gross Staking Consideration, with the trust retaining the remainder.
Alongside that staking fee, ETHB charges a traditional sponsor fee of 0.25% annually on net asset value, with a 12-month waiver to 0.12% for the first $2.5 billion of trust assets.
For crypto native investors, that fee stack is a central question.
Staking returns on Ethereum are not fixed and can vary with network participation, fees, and the broader staking mix.
A regulated wrapper can make staking accessible through familiar brokerage rails, but it can also reduce the portion of rewards that ultimately reaches shareholders, even before considering any delay caused by the activation queue.
ETHB would pull in millions in revenue for BlackRock
The filing’s 95% staking ambition invites an investor question that is common in traditional finance, what does this mean for fee revenue if the product scales.
BlackRock’s spot ETH ETF, ETHA, provides a reference point. This is the largest spot Ethereum fund.
As of Feb. 13, 2026, BlackRock’s iShares product page listed ETHA with $6.58 billion in net assets and 425.4 million shares outstanding.
It also listed a Basket ETH Amount of 302.14 ETH per 40,000 share basket. Those figures imply ETHA holds about 3.21 million ETH.
If ETHB were half as successful as ETHA by size, that would translate to roughly $3.29 billion in assets under management and about 1.61 million ETH held.
Using the mechanics described in the ETHB filing, and keeping the assumptions explicit, the potential staking economics can be sketched as a range rather than a single point.
Assume the fund maintains an aggressive posture, with 95% of its ETH staked.
For staking yield, use two public reference points that bracket recent conditions, Coinbase’s estimated ETH staking reward rate of about 1.89% APY and ValidatorQueue’s network APR snapshot of about 2.84%.
We will use the prospectus’s ETH price reference of $1,918 as the conversion baseline.
Under those assumptions, a half-ETHA-scale ETHB could generate gross staking rewards, in steady state, of about 28,800 ETH per year at 1.89%, or about 43,300 ETH per year at 2.84%.
Apply the filing’s 18% skim pool, and the aggregate amount carved out for the sponsor, the prime execution agent, and staking providers would be about 5,200 ETH per year at 1.89%, or about 7,800 ETH per year at 2.84%.
Using the $1,918 reference, those figures correspond to about $10.0 million and about $15.0 million.
Meanwhile, calculating the sponsor fee is simpler.
On about $3.29 billion of assets, a 0.25% annualized sponsor fee implies about $8.2 million per year after the waiver period. In year one, if the product fully qualifies for the 0.12% waiver on the first $2.5 billion, the sponsor fee would be approximately $5 million.
Taken together, a steady-state revenue target at half the ETHA scale can be framed as roughly $11 million to $20 million per year, combining the sponsor fee with an assumed share of the staking skim pool.
A new feedback loop between ETF flows and the network
BlackRock's ETHB filing points to a second-order effect that could matter if staking ETFs grow.
If multiple US-listed funds begin staking at scale, Ethereum’s activation queue becomes a market variable alongside ether’s price and ETF flow data.
ValidatorQueue’s snapshot showed about 3.9 million ETH in the queue, with an estimated 67-day entry wait and an APR of about 2.84%.
In that environment, the relationship between demand and yield becomes more mechanical. Bigger ETF inflows that chase staking rewards can lengthen the queue, delaying yield realization.
Over time, larger staking participation can also put pressure on yields, because the same reward flow is distributed across a larger staked base.
The reverse can happen in risk-off periods. If exits rise, entry queues can shorten, but the same conditions can stress ETF liquidity.
The filing’s discussion of cash-in-lieu redemptions and delayed settlement underscores that when investors prioritize redemption mechanics, network congestion and withdrawal timing can become more consequential.
BlackRock’s plan to stake up to 95% of ETHB’s assets is therefore less a simple yield add-on and more a shift in how investors may need to evaluate ETH exposure in an ETF wrapper.
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