MetaMask Institutional unlocks solo ETH staking marketplace

MetaMask Institutional is set to be an avenue for the creation of new Ethereum validators after announcing a new staking marketplace for its institutional clients.

Institutions that make use of MetaMask’s institutional-grade wallet and custody service will be able to manage Ether (ETH) staking through four vendors — ConsenSys Staking, Allnodes, Blockdaemon and Kiln. The marketplace aims to simplify access and management of solo staking, allowing institutions to become Ethereum network validators.

MetaMask Institutional (MMI) has been live since October 2021, providing a platform that offers a wider set of controls and functionality more suited to organizations and businesses. As Cointelegraph previously explored, MetaMask’s retail wallet was no longer suited for users or institutions that were managing millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies.

The service’s new staking marketplace will look to simplify the complexity of institutional staking, which features varying fees, terms and conditions, rebates and reporting standards.

Johann Bornman, MMI product lead at ConsenSys, told Cointelegraph that the firm had seen a shift from liquid staking to 32-ETH staking, which he believes is not only driven by Ethereum’s Merge upgrade in 2022 but the looming Shanghai/Capella upgrade.

Shanghai will unlock deposit withdrawals for Ethereum validators, allowing solo stakers who have staked the required 32 ETH to withdraw their tokens and have access to accrued staking rewards. Up until this point, only liquidity provider pools allowed users to deposit and withdraw smaller amounts of ETH.

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Bornman said the upgrade has the potential to prove the “rewards profile and time horizon” for staking ETH, which influences confidence in Ethereum staking:

“We believe this staking rate has the potential to increase rapidly in the ensuing years. Over the near term, we have seen a marked increase in Eth2 staking by institutions over the last several months, and this trend will only continue, given the recent upgrade.”

As a result, MetaMask Institutional rolled out its staking marketplace to provide institutions with a direct avenue to becoming Ethereum validators by staking 32 ETH.

“Our focus is to solve for Eth2 staking, given how important we believe data validation of Ethereum is today and will be in the future. We have designed the service to be able to simply and seamlessly expand onto on-chain ETH staking solutions.”

The launch of the staking marketplace will coincide with the roll-out of an advanced MMI dashboard, including institutional controls, portfolio management, digital asset monitoring with built-in profit-and-loss and performance analytics as well as transaction reporting.

MetaMask Institutional rolled out access to ETH LP pool staking through the popular Lido and Rocket Pool protocols in January 2023, giving institutions initial access to decentralized finance (DeFi) pool staking.

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