On November 19, 2025, BlackRock officially fired the starting gun in the staked Ethereum ETF race by registering the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust in Delaware – the first formal step toward giving investors direct ETH exposure plus ~3.95% annual staking rewards in one regulated wrapper. This move upgrades its massively successful iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA), which currently holds $11.47 billion in assets but still lacks staking due to earlier regulatory and operational roadblocks now cleared away.
The playing field is already crowded: REX-Osprey beat everyone with its ESK launch in September, Grayscale flipped the staking switch on its ETH and SOL funds in October, and VanEck registered its own Lido-tied product weeks ago. Yet none of them are BlackRock. With $13 billion already poured into ETHA and a whopping $73 billion parked in its Bitcoin ETF (IBIT), the $10+ trillion asset-management titan brings unmatched brand power, distribution muscle, and institutional trust that smaller players simply can’t match.
Thanks to the SEC’s September 2025 green light on generic crypto ETF listings – killing the old per-product 19b-4 requirement – BlackRock’s path to approval just got lightning fast. Late to the party? Maybe. But when the world’s biggest money manager finally shows up with a yield-bearing Ethereum ETF, the party tends to move to wherever BlackRock is standing. Get ready for another flood of billions into staked ETH.
