SharpLink Gaming has announced a groundbreaking treasury strategy that positions the Nasdaq-listed firm at the forefront of institutional cryptocurrency adoption, committing $200 million worth of Ethereum to the Linea zkEVM scaling network developed by Consensys.
The Minneapolis-based company revealed on Oct. 28 that it will route its capital through liquid restaking protocol ether.fi and EigenCloud's verifiable infrastructure, creating what industry observers describe as a new benchmark for how institutional investors can actively deploy digital asset treasuries while maintaining compliance and security standards.
Unlike traditional staking approaches where assets sit idle earning basic rewards, SharpLink's deployment represents a sophisticated, multi-layered strategy designed to maximize returns while mitigating risk. The plan will be executed gradually over several years, with assets custodied and managed by Anchorage Digital Bank, a federally regulated digital asset bank.
The deployment combines native Ethereum staking yields with restaking rewards from securing EigenCloud Autonomous Verifiable Services (AVSs), direct incentives from both Linea and ether.fi, and exposure to emerging AI workloads secured by Ethereum's cryptoeconomic guarantees.
"As one of the largest public holders of ETH, we manage our treasury with institutional rigor and discipline," said Joseph Chalom, Co-CEO of SharpLink. "This deployment enables us to access the best of Ethereum's staking, restaking and DeFi yield, while maintaining the institutional safeguards our stockholders expect."
Linea: The Layer 2 Built for Institutional Capital
Linea is a zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) Layer 2 developed by Consensys, the blockchain infrastructure company co-founded by Ethereum creator Joseph Lubin. The network uses zero-knowledge proofs to process transactions off Ethereum's main chain while maintaining full compatibility with Ethereum's security guarantees and existing smart contracts.
What distinguishes Linea from other Layer 2 solutions is its protocol-level ETH burn mechanism. The network burns 20% of all transaction fees paid in ETH, directly contributing to Ethereum's deflationary pressure — making it the first major rollup to return economic value to Ethereum's base layer rather than extracting it.
Additionally, Linea introduced native yield on bridged ETH in October 2025, allowing assets moved to the network to earn staking rewards automatically. This feature transforms Linea into what Lubin describes as "a programmable home for assets in motion."
The network has attracted significant institutional attention. In September, global banking cooperative SWIFT began prototyping its new settlement ledger on Linea, validating the network's enterprise-grade security and compliance capabilities.
EigenCloud: Extending Ethereum Security to New Frontiers
EigenCloud, formerly known as EigenLayer, represents a fundamental evolution in how blockchain networks secure distributed applications. The protocol enables Ethereum validators to "restake" their already-staked ETH to provide security for additional services — a process that generates extra yield without requiring additional capital commitment.
Built on the EigenLayer restaking protocol, EigenCloud has evolved beyond simple restaking to offer what it calls "verifiability-as-a-service." The platform now secures over $17.5 billion in total value locked and powers 162 Actively Validated Services spanning data availability, oracle networks, and increasingly, verifiable AI computation.
The integration with Google Cloud's Agent Payments Protocol in September 2025 marked a watershed moment, positioning EigenCloud as the verifiable backbone for AI agents settling payments across traditional banking rails and blockchains. With companies like Securitize using EigenCloud to verify asset pricing data for BlackRock's $2 billion BUIDL fund, the platform is bridging traditional finance and decentralized infrastructure.
For SharpLink, exposure to EigenCloud's AVSs means the company's ETH will help secure cutting-edge services like verifiable AI inference, decentralized compute, and high-throughput data availability — earning rewards while supporting infrastructure that could define Web3's next decade.
The Ether.fi Layer: Maintaining Liquidity While Restaking
Ether.fi has emerged as the dominant liquid restaking protocol, commanding over $10 billion in total value locked. Unlike traditional staking which locks assets for extended periods, ether.fi provides users with liquid staking tokens (eETH) that can be deployed across DeFi protocols while still earning staking and restaking rewards.
The protocol's success stems from its non-custodial approach — users maintain control of their withdrawal keys — and its early integration with EigenLayer's restaking infrastructure. This combination allows SharpLink to earn multiple layers of yield while preserving the ability to redeploy capital if market conditions shift.
By routing its deployment through ether.fi, SharpLink maintains institutional-grade risk management while accessing the full spectrum of opportunities in the restaking ecosystem.
Strategic Significance: Lubin's Institutional Vision
The deployment carries particular strategic weight given the interconnected relationships between the key players. Joseph Lubin, Ethereum co-founder and Consensys CEO, serves as Chairman of SharpLink, while Consensys operates as both a strategic advisor and investor in the company.
This alignment enables SharpLink to serve as a proving ground for institutional-grade Ethereum infrastructure. "Ethereum is becoming the programmable foundation for a new generation of financial markets," Lubin stated in the announcement. "Linea was built to ensure that ETH is not just used but made more productive with every deployment."
Lubin positioned the deployment as evidence that financial markets are shifting toward trustless infrastructure, arguing that institutional ETH must play an active role rather than sitting idle in cold storage. He framed SharpLink's approach as a model others will likely follow once they seek efficient, secure ways to generate returns on-chain without compromising governance or compliance.
SharpLink's Massive Ethereum Position
The $200 million deployment represents just a fraction of SharpLink's substantial holdings. The company recently acquired 19,271 ETH for approximately $78.3 million, bringing its total treasury to over 859,000 ETH — worth more than $3.6 billion at current prices.
This positions SharpLink as the second-largest public holder of Ethereum globally, behind only MicroStrategy's Bitcoin holdings in terms of corporate cryptocurrency treasuries. The firm earned over $23 million in staking rewards between June and October 2025, demonstrating the viability of its yield-generation strategy.
SharpLink's stock surged over 354% in the past six months following its aggressive accumulation strategy, though analysts note the company may be trading at a premium to its net asset value.
Building Institutional Capital Markets Infrastructure
The Linea deployment is described as "the first act in a broader strategic partnership" between SharpLink and Consensys. The companies plan to co-develop what they term "institutional, composable capital markets primitives" — a reference to new financial infrastructure that could reshape how companies raise capital and manage liquidity on-chain.
This ambitious goal involves pioneering models for on-chain capital raises, creating programmable liquidity tools, and engineering tokenized equity strategies. SharpLink itself has tokenized its equity as SBET directly on Ethereum, providing investors with leveraged exposure to ETH through a publicly-traded wrapper.
The company's entry into the Linea Consortium — alongside Eigen Labs, ENS Labs, and Status — gives it governance influence over the Layer 2's development and positions it as a key stakeholder in Ethereum's scaling roadmap.
Final thoughts
SharpLink's deployment arrives amid growing institutional interest in cryptocurrency yield strategies. Traditional corporations have historically held digital assets as passive investments, but the emergence of staking, restaking, and DeFi protocols has created new opportunities for active treasury management.
The use of Anchorage Digital Bank as qualified custodian addresses regulatory concerns that have prevented many institutions from pursuing similar strategies. Anchorage operates under federal and state banking charters, providing the compliance infrastructure that public companies require.
"This innovative partnership positions Linea as an emerging home for institutional ETH capital and EigenCloud as a trusted source of ETH-denominated yield," the companies stated in their joint announcement. "Moreover, it reinforces SharpLink's institutional approach to actively managing and deploying its treasury assets."
As corporations increasingly seek alternatives to holding cash in zero-yield or low-yield accounts, SharpLink's model of deploying treasury assets into productive blockchain infrastructure while maintaining institutional safeguards may become a template for others to follow.
The deployment also demonstrates how Layer 2 networks, restaking protocols, and liquid staking providers can combine to create sophisticated financial products that bridge the gap between DeFi's high yields and traditional finance's risk management requirements.
With Linea's LINEA token launch expected in Q1 2026, SharpLink's early positioning could provide additional upside as the network's ecosystem matures and the broader market recognizes Ethereum Layer 2s as fundamental infrastructure rather than speculative technology.