The Ethereum (ETH) Foundation deposited 2,016 ETH on Tuesday as the opening tranche of a plan to stake approximately 70,000 ETH from its treasury, with all resulting rewards directed back to fund operations rather than sold on the open market.
The move follows the Foundation's Treasury Policy, published in June 2025, which established a 15% annual spending rate relative to total treasury value and a 2.5-year operating runway target.
Historically, the Ethereum Foundation has covered operating costs primarily through direct ETH sales. The staking program is designed to generate recurring, ETH-denominated income without requiring asset liquidation.
How It Works
The Foundation is running its own validators using open-source tools Dirk and Vouch, developed by infrastructure firm Attestant. Dirk serves as a distributed signer, spreading private keys across multiple geographic jurisdictions to eliminate a single point of failure. Vouch manages multiple Beacon and Execution Client pairings with configurable strategies to reduce correlated client failure risk.
The setup employs minority clients and a mix of hosted and self-managed hardware across several countries.
Validators use Type 2 (0x02) withdrawal credentials, which reduce required signing keys to roughly 35 at a maximum effective balance of 2,048 ETH per validator. Blocks are being built locally, without proposer-builder separation sidecars.
The current Ethereum validator staking yield is approximately 2.808%, according to the CoinDesk Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR).
Why It Matters
The 70,000 ETH being staked represents roughly 40.5% of the Foundation's currently deployable holdings. Arkham Intelligence data shows the Foundation holds 172,650 ETH plus 10,000 wrapped ETH available for deployment.
Staking rewards will fund protocol R&D, ecosystem development, and community grants. The architecture avoids delegation to third-party staking pools, keeping validator operations transparent and under direct Foundation control.
The announcement coincides with Ethereum trading below $2,000 and co-founder Vitalik Buterin selling approximately 10,723 ETH since Feb. 2 to fund open-source projects, according to Onchain Lens data.
The Foundation's staking approach, if sustained, reduces its structural ETH sell pressure relative to operating expenses, though the yield effect is modest relative to overall ETH market liquidity.
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