The proposed Solana ETFs currently exclude staking rewards, with the issuer following the precedent of Ethereum ETF

On December 5, Grayscale Investments and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) submitted a 19b-4 file for Solana ETF to the U.S. SEC yesterday. With Grayscale's participation, only BlackRock, Fidelity, ProShares and Ark are among the major crypto ETF issuers that have not yet applied for Solana ETF. It is worth noting that none of these proposed Solana ETFs will offer staking rewards to investors.

This is not voluntary. The issuers of Solana ETF followed the precedent set by Ethereum ETFs, excluding staking rewards in compliance with SEC guidelines. The details of conversations between Ethereum ETF issuers and the SEC remain unclear. However, it seems that the SEC is concerned about staking rewards being classified as securities and potential forfeiture risks associated with staking ETH.

Therefore, when starting to apply for a Solana ETF, these institutions gave up on staking options from the beginning. However, issuers repeatedly insist that despite lacking staking rewards, obtaining compliant exposure to Solana directly in brokerage accounts still makes these products attractive.

However, for Solana,the opportunity cost of cancelling staking is much higher than Ethereum's . According to data from the Ethereum Foundation,Ethereum currently has an annualized stake rate of 3.4%. According to data from 21.co,Solana had an average annualized stake rate over last week at 11.4%. SOL’s Stacking reward isn’t always this high,but even during relatively low August,it yielded more than 8%.