Morgan Stanley staking arrived as a packaged product on July 28, when Morgan Stanley Investment Management began trading two exchange-traded products on NYSE Arca. The Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust and Morgan Stanley Solana Trust, tickers MSSE and MSOL, are the first spot Ether and SOL products from a major US bank-affiliated asset manager to include staking from the first day rather than adding it later.

What the Morgan Stanley Staking ETPs Offer

MSSE generally intends to stake between 50 and 80 percent of its ether. MSOL may stake up to 100 percent of its SOL, holding some back for liquidity and redemptions. Roughly 95 percent of Morgan Stanley staking rewards pass through to shareholders, with the balance going to custodians and staking providers.

One structural detail deserves emphasis, because the draft coverage often blurs it. Morgan Stanley Investment Management retains none of the staking rewards for itself. The roughly five percent leakage sits with service providers, not the sponsor, which monetises instead through a 0.14 percent expense ratio. That fee is the lowest among US Ethereum and Solana funds, undercutting Grayscale’s Mini Ethereum Trust at 0.15 percent and Franklin Templeton’s Solana fund at 0.19 percent.

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Why the Morgan Stanley Staking ETPs Could Not Exist in 2024

Recency is the point here. Spot Ether ETPs reached the US market in July 2024 with no staking component, because regulators had not resolved how a fund could stake without effectively operating an unregistered investment company inside the trust. SEC guidance and revised exchange listing rules changed that across 2025, and staking only went live in US products last year. Morgan Stanley staking therefore rests on roughly twelve months of regulatory precedent rather than a settled framework.

So Morgan Stanley staking is notable less for the mechanism than for the name attached. Ally Wallace, global head of ETFs at the manager, framed the launch as extending “what we started with MSBT to the two largest Proof-of-Stake networks,” which places these funds as a follow-on to an existing bitcoin trust rather than a first crypto step.

Who Runs the Validators Behind the Morgan Stanley Staking ETPs

Three providers handle staking, not one. Figment sits alongside Galaxy Blockchain Infrastructure and Coinbase Canada, and that multi-sourcing matters more than any single name on the list.

Figment is the largest of the independents, serving over 1,500 institutional clients with around $18 billion staked, and it holds genesis validator status on both Ethereum and Solana plus full NORS certification, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001. It has never suffered a double-signing slashing event. It also powers staking inside Grayscale’s Ethereum and Solana products and the 3iQ Solana staking ETF in Canada.

That concentration is worth watching. A handful of specialists now sit beneath most regulated staking products, so an operational failure at one could touch several issuers simultaneously. Morgan Stanley staking spreading across three providers reads as an acknowledgement of exactly that risk, which is reassuring for these two funds and unhelpful for the category, since it confirms how few credible operators exist.

What the Morgan Stanley Staking ETPs Signal

The product itself is a low-risk move. Earlier movers absorbed the regulatory and technical cost, and historical yields, roughly 2.8 percent on ether and six to eight percent on Solana, are well established. What changes is that a bank-affiliated manager judged the compliance and reputational hurdles low enough to proceed, which tells competitors this is no longer a crypto-native play.

Watch two things. First, whether rival bank-affiliated managers ship staking-enabled ETPs before year end. Second, whether competition shifts to the expense ratio rather than the reward share, since 95 percent pass-through is quickly becoming standard while 0.14 percent is not, and fee compression is the older and more reliable pattern in regulated fund markets.

Fintechbits covers digital asset products, institutional crypto infrastructure and regulated investment vehicles. Nothing here constitutes financial or investment advice. All analysis represents the editorial views of Fintechbits.