BlackRock’s staking Ethereum ETF is paying yield, but most of its own customers are still buying the fund that pays none. September 11 trading data show demand for both the iShares Ethereum Staking Trust (ETHB) and the flagship iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA), with a wide gap in volume but nearly identical median spreads.
ETHB launched on Nasdaq on March 12, 2026, six months after Grayscale distributed the first US ether staking payout from its converted ETHE trust. It stakes 70 to 95 percent of its underlying ether through Coinbase Prime and passes through roughly 82 percent of gross staking rewards to shareholders, which works out to a net yield of about 3.1 percent annualized, distributed monthly. Its fee structure mirrors ETHA at a 0.25 percent headline rate with a 0.12 percent promotional waiver for the first $2.5 billion in assets or the first year, whichever came first.
The product exists because of a regulatory shift. The SEC rescinded SAB 121, the accounting rule that had made custodied crypto prohibitively expensive for banks, and the GENIUS Act gave stablecoin and staking structures a clearer legal footing. Ether set an all-time high above $4,900 in August 2025, and the staking question that had blocked yield-bearing ETFs since 2024 finally got an answer: first Grayscale, then BlackRock, launched funds that pass staking rewards through to shareholders.
Liquidity beats yield
Despite that payout, ETHA remains the market’s center of gravity. The non-staking fund holds roughly $9 billion in assets and has historically run about half of the US ether ETF market. Blockworks tracker data put ETHA at $8.59 billion in assets with $32.99 million in daily volume, far ahead of any rival. Fidelity’s FETH sits at $1.35 billion and Grayscale’s converted ETHE at $1.86 billion.
The September 11 session showed the pattern clearly: both funds drew orders, but the trading gap between them stayed wide while median spreads came in almost the same. In practice that means ETHB is liquid enough to trade cheaply, yet investors still route the bulk of their ether exposure through the older, larger product.
How the staking products differ
| Fund | Issuer | Staking | Fee | Assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ETHA | iShares | No | 0.25% | $8.59B |
| ETHB | iShares | Yes, 70-95% staked | 0.25% | smaller |
| ETH | Grayscale Mini | No | 0.15% | mid-size |
| ETHE | Grayscale | Yes since Oct 2025 | 2.50% | $1.86B |
| FETH | Fidelity | No | 0.25% | $1.35B |
Grayscale’s ETHE paid its first staking distribution on January 5, 2026, $0.083178 per share for the October-December 2025 reward period. The regulatory shorthand for these payouts is a quasi-dividend, and each issuer has had to structure them within trust rules that fall outside the Investment Company Act of 1940. That status matters: it means the funds are not registered investment companies, so they escape some mutual fund requirements but also cannot use structures available to conventional ETFs.
Why the staking pitch has not closed the deal
Three structural factors have kept staking ETFs from dominating. First, bitcoin funds still carry a cleaner institutional pitch as a non-correlated store of value, and BTC ETF flows remain nearly five times ahead of ETH flows over the same calendar exposure. Second, ETF shares trade only during US stock market hours, so a staking yield is locked behind a market that closes at 4 pm, while ether itself stakes around the clock. Third, large allocators often hold ether exposure in separate staking structures already, which makes a staking ETF redundant for them.
There is also a fee nuance. The cheapest non-staking exposure is Grayscale’s Ethereum Mini Trust at 0.15 percent, undercutting ETHA’s 0.25 percent. For staking exposure with a tier-one issuer, the choice narrows to BlackRock’s ETHB or Grayscale’s staking-enabled ETHE, which still carries a 2.50 percent fee and the heaviest outflow history in the category.
Context: ether flows are rotating anyway
The yield question lands in a market that is already moving. Ether funds took $216 million of inflows on Friday, their biggest daily haul since August 27, while bitcoin ETFs logged a fourth straight day of outflows. Ether’s price has also recovered sharply, crossing $2,600 last week for the first time since January and triggering about $665 million in crypto liquidations over 24 hours, most of them short positions. Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the ether treasury company chaired by Tom Lee, rose more than 9 percent in the same session. Bitmine separately disclosed last week that it bought 27,180 ether, lifting its stash to 5.96 million ETH, close to its stated goal of controlling 5 percent of ether supply.
BlackRock filed on August 4 for a reverse share split on ETHA, effective after the close on October 5, a housekeeping move that follows the fund’s NAV swings this year. The trust’s YTD NAV return stood at minus 16.4 percent at the end of August, a reminder that the staking yield is small next to ether’s price moves. A 3.1 percent payout does little to offset a drawdown of that size, and it also does little to dampen the upside when ether rallies 8 percent in a day.
The open question
August 2025 remains the only month in which spot ether ETF flows exceeded spot bitcoin flows, $3.87 billion against minus $750 million. Issuers hoped staking payouts would make that kind of rotation permanent. So far the evidence points the other way: yield alone has not pulled assets out of the liquid flagship.
For now the market has delivered its verdict on the first year of staking ETFs: the product works, the yield is real, and the liquidity still lives in the older fund. Whether ETHB converts that spread into share over the next quarter depends less on its payout and more on whether ether flows keep outpacing bitcoin’s.