Institutional staking provider Figment has enhanced its collaboration with Coinbase, enabling the exchange’s institutional clients to stake a wider array of proof-of-stake (PoS) assets directly through Coinbase Custody — a development that may boost adoption beyond Ethereum.
With this integration, Coinbase Prime customers can leverage Figment’s staking infrastructure to tap into additional PoS networks, such as Solana (SOL), Sui (SUI), Aptos (APT), Avalanche (AVAX), among others, as the companies announced on Tuesday.
This partnership, which commenced in 2023, has already generated over $2 billion in staked assets via Coinbase Prime.
Coinbase Prime caters to institutional investors by providing a comprehensive crypto prime brokerage, which includes trading, financing, and custody for over 440 digital assets across multiple blockchains.
Currently, Figment manages $18 billion in staked assets across more than 40 protocols.
Related: Coinbase stock surges after JPMorgan upgrade of Base, USDC potential
Crypto ETFs come to the US
This announcement follows the introduction of several staking-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US this month, including the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL), which provides exposure to Solana staking.
Grayscale has also revealed plans to implement staking for its Ethereum and Solana products. Earlier this month, the asset manager facilitated the staking of $150 million worth of Ether (ETH) to enable investors to earn staking rewards from their holdings.
These advancements arrive mere months after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) concluded that certain liquid staking activities do not count as securities transactions, thus exempting them from the agency’s jurisdiction.
Prior to this ruling, asset managers such as VanEck, Bitwise, and Jito Labs had urged the securities regulator to clarify its position and approve liquid staking mechanisms for Solana-based ETFs.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins stated that the decree represented a “significant step forward in clarifying the staff’s view about crypto asset activities that do not fall within the SEC’s jurisdiction.”
Related: SEC ends ‘regulation through enforcement,’ calls tokenization ‘innovation’
