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SharpLink, the Nasdaq-listed company trading under the ticker SBET, is staking $200 million worth of Ethereum through Lido, the largest liquid staking protocol in crypto. The company will receive wrapped staked ETH (wstETH) in return and park those tokens with Anchorage Digital Bank for custody.
How the deal works
Lido operates as a liquid staking protocol, which means users can stake their ETH to help secure the Ethereum network and earn rewards without locking up their assets entirely. In exchange for depositing ETH, stakers receive wstETH, a token that represents the staked position and accrues value over time as staking rewards accumulate.
Lido currently manages roughly $16.5 billion in staked ETH, making it the dominant player in this corner of decentralized finance. The protocol’s wstETH token is actively used as collateral across more than 100 different DeFi protocols, giving it deep liquidity and broad acceptance across the ecosystem.
On the custody side, Anchorage Digital Bank will hold SharpLink’s wstETH. Anchorage is a federally chartered digital asset bank, one of the few crypto-native institutions with an OCC banking charter.
SharpLink’s broader ETH strategy
This $200 million staking allocation isn’t SharpLink’s first foray into treating Ethereum as a core treasury asset. SharpLink has a history of partnering with Anchorage Digital, including a $200 million allocation for Linea Layer-2 deployment in 2025.
SharpLink’s decision to route through Lido rather than running its own validators means it avoids significant technical infrastructure and ongoing maintenance. The tradeoff is a protocol fee, but because wstETH is a liquid, tradeable token, SharpLink retains the ability to exit its position or deploy the wstETH elsewhere in DeFi. Direct staking, by contrast, involves withdrawal queues and less immediate liquidity.
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