The ETF Ledger · Ether · Data as of October 20, 2026
What staking really costs in an Ether ETF
Six of the eleven US spot Ether ETFs now stake. Each advertises a management fee. Five of the six disclose that the sponsor and its staking providers also keep a share of the rewards, and the sixth does not say. That share can rival or exceed the management fee, and it is rarely in the headline.
The short version
Grayscale's two Ether funds hold the same asset and are run by the same sponsor. ETHE charges 2.50% a year and its trust keeps 23% of gross staking rewards. The Mini fund (ETH) charges 0.15% and keeps 6%. Under the same illustrative assumptions below, ETHE costs holders about 1 percentage point a year against owning ether directly, while the Mini adds about 1.7 points. The two funds hold $1.68B and $2.21B.
Funds that stake
| Ticker | Issuer | Headline fee | Fee charged now | Sponsor / provider share of rewards | Share of ETH staked | Net rewards (issuer) | Paid yield | AUM | Rewards | Source for the reward share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ETHE | Grayscale | 2.50% | 2.50% | 23% | 83.93% | 2.04% | 2.00% | $1.68B | Paid in cash | Grayscale trust agreement / Supp. No. 2 |
| ETH | Grayscale | 0.15% | 0.15% | 6% | 80.94% | 2.45% | 2.22% | $2.21B | Paid in cash | Grayscale trust agreement (Aug 2026) |
| FETH | Fidelity | 0.25% | 0.25% | 15% | — | — | — | $1.59B | Planned | Fidelity prospectus (Aug 21, 2026) |
| ETHB | BlackRock (iShares) | 0.25% | 0.12% | 18% | — | — | 1.38% | $1.06B | Paid in cash | iShares prospectus (Mar 11, 2026) |
| MSSE | Morgan Stanley Investment Management | 0.14% | 0.14% | 5% | — | — | — | $49.5M | Planned | Morgan Stanley prospectus (Jul 23, 2026) |
| TETH | 21Shares | 0.21% | 0.00% | ~25%* | 34.14% | 1.81% | 1.06% | $26.7M | Paid in cash | derived: issuer gross 2.41% vs net 1.81% |
*TETH does not state its reward share. Its policy says providers receive "a fixed percentage" that "may vary." The ~25% is our arithmetic from its published gross (2.41%) and net (1.81%) staking rates; it is not an issuer figure. TETH's 0.21% fee is waived in full until October 8, 2027. ETHB's 0.25% fee is 0.12% on the first $2.5B for 12 months from March 2026. FETH's issuer page lists staking, but its prospectus says staking begins "as soon as practicable" after August 21, 2026, and we could not confirm it is live. MSSE's distributions are planned and none has been traced yet. Net rewards and paid yield are as defined on The ETF Ledger.
Ether funds that do not stake
| Ticker | Issuer | Fee | AUM |
|---|---|---|---|
| ETHA | BlackRock (iShares) | 0.25% | $8.16B |
| ETHW | Bitwise | 0.20% | $261.0M |
| ETHV | VanEck | 0.20% | $108.5M |
| EZET | Franklin Templeton | 0.19% | $47.2M |
| QETH | Invesco / Galaxy | 0.25% | $20.8M |
These funds earn no staking rewards. Their fee is their whole cost, but holders also forgo the rewards. VanEck (ETHV) and Franklin (EZET) have filed to add staking; neither is confirmed live. ETHW's staking proposal is unconfirmed as well.
Why the fee alone misleads
A staking ETF has two charges. One is the management fee, charged on the whole position. The other is the share of rewards the sponsor and its staking providers keep, charged only on what is staked. With a 2.5% reward and 80% staked, an 18% reward share (ETHB) costs about 0.36% of the position a year, more than the 0.25% headline fee it would be compared with.
On the same assumptions, FETH's 15% share adds about 0.30% to its 0.25% fee, while MSSE's 5% adds about 0.10% to its 0.14%. And a fund like ETHE can pay out rewards every month and still leave holders behind a plain ether fund that does not stake.
Taxes
Grayscale states that it intends to report staking rewards as taxable income to shareholders whether or not they are distributed (its trusts are grantor trusts). Other issuers' tax treatment varies and should be read in each prospectus. Funds that keep rewards in NAV and funds that pay them in cash can differ in when you owe tax. This page is not tax advice.
Method
Every fee, reward share and date comes from the issuer's own prospectus, trust agreement, supplement or fund page, listed in the table and in the ETF Ledger rows. No aggregator data is used. The chart's net-return figure is: 80% × 2.5% × (1 − reward share) − fee charged. Change the assumptions and the order can shift: at a much higher reward rate ETHE's result improves, though it still trails the others.