The currently proposed Solana ETFs exclude staking rewards, with issuers following the precedent set by Ethereum ETFs

ChainCatcher news, Grayscale Investments and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) submitted the 19b-4 filing for a Solana ETF to the U.S. SEC yesterday. With Grayscale's involvement, the only major crypto ETF issuers that have not yet applied for a Solana ETF are BlackRock, Fidelity, ProShares, and Ark. Notably, none of these proposed Solana ETFs will provide staking rewards to investors.

This is not voluntary. Solana ETF issuers followed the precedent set by Ethereum ETFs, excluding staking rewards to comply with SEC guidelines. The details of the dialogue between Ethereum ETF issuers and the SEC remain unclear. However, the SEC seems concerned that staking rewards could be classified as securities, as well as the potential forfeiture risks associated with staking ETH.

Therefore, when they began applying for the Solana ETF, these institutions opted out of staking from the start. Nevertheless, the issuers have repeatedly insisted that despite the lack of staking rewards, gaining compliant exposure to Solana directly in brokerage accounts makes these products still attractive.

However, for Solana, the opportunity cost of forgoing staking is much higher than for Ethereum. According to the Ethereum Foundation, the current staking annual yield for Ethereum is 3.4%. According to data from 21.co, the average staking annual yield for Solana over the past week is 11.4%. The staking rewards for SOL are not always that high, but even in the relatively sluggish month of August, its yield exceeded 8%.