Lido Report Puts Institutional Share of Staked Ethereum (ETH) at 35.3%

Lido Counts Institutional Staking at 35.3%

The share of staked Ethereum (ETH) classified as institutional reached 35.3% at the end of June 2026, up from 25.9% at the end of 2025, according to the type-by-type breakdown in Lido DAO's first-half report. The 9.4 percentage point advance counts only Ether that has already been staked, not the token's full circulating supply, so the two readings describe a changing mix within the staking market rather than growth of the staked base itself.

Lido DAO, the organization behind the largest liquid staking protocol, divides all staked ETH into categories that include institutions and exchanges, and its report credits inflows into those two buckets with the largest contribution to staking-market growth over the six months. The report gives no dollar figure for the institutional inflows and does not name individual allocators, so the 35.3% remains a share-of-stake reading rather than a measure of committed capital. Regardless of Ethereum price direction, the composition of who stakes has shifted materially: at the start of the year roughly one in four staked coins sat with institutional accounts, and by mid-year the ratio was closer to one in three.

The distinction matters for how the number is read. A share of staked supply rises both when institutions add stake and when other participants leave, and the report does not decompose the 9.4 point move between those two effects. What it does fix is the measurement window, end of December 2025 to end of June 2026, and the classification source, Lido's own categorization rather than a third-party tally. The report itself is the primary document behind the figure; no exchange filing or on-chain record independently breaks out the institutional category.

Reward Rate Slides to 2.63%

Network-wide Ethereum staking data puts the base the institutional share sits inside at 43.8 million Ethereum (ETH), equal to 35.9% of total supply at the end of the third quarter, according to quarterly research from asset manager Bitwise. Net inflows reached 1.99 million ETH during the quarter, a sixth consecutive quarterly increase, while the network's staking reward rate slipped from 2.81% to 2.63%.

The direction of the reward rate follows from Ethereum's issuance design. The network's official documentation states that a validator's base reward is calculated from the total active staked balance, so each additional wave of participants lowers the per-validator payout, all else equal. More participation does not translate into a higher rate, a mechanic in place since the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade moved the chain fully to proof of stake.

Operating scale and returns diverged modestly in the institutional segment. Coinbase disclosed in its second-quarter report that the institutional Ethereum (ETH) validators it operates directly averaged 4.76 million ETH staked, 12.16% of all staked ETH at the time, with an average annual reward rate of 2.87% against a network average of 2.80%. The company notes the figures exclude amounts delegated to partners. Access timing shaped the economics as well: Lido's report says the validator entry queue exceeded 70 days in the first half, distinct from the wait to withdraw after unstaking, and judged that for some deposits the rewards forgone while waiting outweighed the liquidity benefit. Coinbase Prime introduced a feature in January 2026 to transfer staked ETH vaults between parties within the platform in minutes, while a full unstake, including fund recovery delays, can take more than 10 days. For comparison, the same research puts Solana's staked share at 69% of supply at the end of the third quarter, with its total reward rate easing from 6.38% to 5.99%, a figure distinct from net yields realized per institution.

Two Percentages, Two Units

The two headline percentages in this story count different things and should not be read as one series: Lido's 35.3% is the institutional slice of staked ETH, while Bitwise's 35.9% is the staked slice of total supply. That makes the institutional share worth tracking on its own terms. Lido publishes the breakdown every half year, so the next report will restate the same unit and allow a clean comparison; until then, the figure is not yet comparable across the two research sources. The falling reward rate, meanwhile, is the mechanical consequence of the same inflows.