Report: Nearly 70% of institutional investors holding Ethereum participated in staking

ChainCatcher news, according to a report by Cryptoslate, based on Blockworks Research, nearly 70% of institutional investors holding Ethereum are participating in staking, with 52.6% holding liquid staking tokens (LST). Nearly half of the institutional investors staking ETH prefer to use only one integrated platform, such as Coinbase and Binance. At the same time, 60.6% of survey participants also use third-party staking platforms.

The report states that one-fifth of the institutional investors surveyed allocate more than 60% of their portfolios to Ethereum or ETH-based LSTs. The survey participants include exchanges, custodians, investment firms, asset management companies, wallet providers, and banks. The report shows that the key features considered by respondents when choosing a staking provider are reputation, range of supported networks, pricing, ease of participation, competitive costs, as well as expertise and scalability.

When deciding whether staking is feasible, liquidity and security are also the most important features for institutional investors. On a scale of 1 to 10, the average importance score for liquidity is 8.5, reflecting investors' concerns about the ability to exit large LST positions when necessary. Meanwhile, the security score is even higher, with an average importance rating of 9.4, due to concerns that withdrawal efficiency may be affected during market volatility. Additionally, 61.1% of respondents indicated that they are willing to pay extra for enhanced security and fault tolerance. Geographic location also plays a role, with half of the institutional investors considering the location of validators important when choosing a staking platform.