Anchorage Digital, a San Francisco-based digital platform and owner of the first federally licensed crypto bank, will open an Ethereum (ETH) staking option for institutions. This move comes in anticipation of the long-promised switch of the Ethereum network from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol.
Anchorage announced on Tuesday its intention to introduce ETH staking — a practice of earning rewards for serving as a transaction validator on the Ethereum blockchain — for institutions. Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of Anchorage Digital, described staking as a benefit for institutional investors and the ecosystem:
“By paving the way for institutions to stake their Ethereum, we are providing greater legitimacy to proven assets in the market, and in the process, removing any hot wallet risk for institutions looking to generate new profits with Ethereum. cryptocurrencies”.
The announcement underscores Anchorage’s high expectations for the upcoming Ethereum network upgrade that will connect its mainnet to the PoS system, coordinated by the Beacon Chain.. This feature should allow investors to collect rewards for their ETH locked in an Anchorage validator. Following The Merge, validators would earn not only block rewards, but also transaction priority fees that previously went to PoW miners.
The Beacon Chain was launched as part of the Ethereum roadmap in December 2020. In June 2022, Ethereum opened the Sepolia testnet, which would begin reaching consensus using PoS instead of PoW. The official date for the merge event on the Ethereum mainnet has been pushed back several times. It’s currently scheduled for completion in August 2022, but that date could be pushed back further due to another difficulty bomb delay.
Last month, Anchorage formed an exchange custody network with five digital asset trading platforms – Binance.US, CoinList, Blockchain.com, Strix Leviathan, and Wintermute – to segregate institutional client funds from exchanges into asset vaults. regulated. In December 2021, the company raised $350 million in a funding round led by investment giant KKR.
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