Morgan Stanley has updated its proposed Ethereum and Solana exchange-traded fund filings to include staking arrangements alongside spot holdings. The company disclosed that both funds plan to stake a portion of their underlying crypto assets to generate additional income, with an annual sponsorship fee set at 0.14%.
95% of staking rewards remain in the fund.
The announcement states that both the Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust and the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust follow a similar structure. The staking service provider and custodian will receive 5% of the staking rewards as compensation, with the remaining 95% retained within the fund.
This means that fund investors may receive additional returns from on-chain staking, in addition to direct price exposure to ETH and SOL. This adjustment also demonstrates that asset managers continue to advance the integration of staking mechanisms into U.S. crypto ETF structures.
- The annual sponsorship fee is 0.14%.
- Service provider and custodian split: 5%
- 95% of staking rewards remain in the fund.
Ethereum file reveals 63-day waiting period
In the Ethereum section, the document reveals more specific operational details. The company states that the custodian will deposit the fund’s held ETH into an Ethereum staking smart contract, and a third-party staking service will operate the validator on behalf of the fund.
The document also notes that staked ETH remains subject to slashing risk. If a validator fails to meet network requirements or violates protocol rules, a portion of the staked assets may be penalized.
Morgan Stanley also provided the current queue data for Ethereum. According to the document, as of May 18, 2026, approximately 3.64 million ETH are in the validator activation queue. At the current rate of up to 56 validators activated per epoch, this equates to roughly 57,600 additional ETH entering staking per day.
Based on this estimate, newly staked ETH may need to wait approximately 63 days before beginning to earn staking rewards.
The Solana trust uses a similar structure.
Another revised document shows that the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust will also adopt a similar model. The company disclosed that validators operated by staking service providers can serve as delegated validators to handle the fund’s staked SOL.
Unlike the Ethereum documentation, the Solana version does not disclose daily limits on the amount that can be staked. However, the document states that the custodians participating in the staking process will not control the private keys associated with the delegated SOL.
This filing update continues Morgan Stanley’s effort to expand its digital assets product lineup. Earlier this year, the bank entered the spot Bitcoin ETF market, and now it is further extending its offerings to include Ethereum and Solana.