SharpLink, a Nasdaq-listed company built around an Ethereum treasury, has moved $400 million worth of ETH onchain while keeping it with Anchorage Digital Bank. The money went into ether.fi and Lido in equal halves. Qualified custody settles who holds the keys, but not the risks inside the protocols.
SharpLink moved $400 million worth of ETH onchain without letting the assets leave regulated custody. The custody partner is Anchorage Digital Bank.
The arrangement is being framed as the first time a public company has deployed ETH onchain while keeping its holdings in a qualified custodian.
How the $400 million was split
SharpLink (Nasdaq: SBET) divided the deployment evenly across two of Ethereum's best-known staking platforms. The first $200 million went through ether.fi, where the company minted weETH, and the second $200 million went through Lido, producing wstETH.
Both positions remain custodied by Anchorage, which is the first federally chartered crypto bank in the US. A liquid staking token such as wstETH represents the staked ETH plus rewards, and it can still be moved or used elsewhere.
The ether.fi leg carries its own milestone. It marks the first time a public company has minted a liquid restaking token while holding it in qualified custody. Restaking takes staked ETH and puts it to work securing additional services, and weETH is ether.fi's token for that position.
Both deployments were announced on or around October 19, 2026.
A treasury that already earns rewards
SharpLink holds approximately 900,000 ETH, which ranks among the largest corporate holdings of the asset anywhere. The company has accumulated staking rewards totaling tens of millions of dollars without buying additional ETH.
In October 2025, SharpLink outlined plans for a deployment on Linea, an Ethereum layer-2 network, and in August 2026 it committed to staking with Lido. The new ether.fi and Lido positions represent the first major steps in turning those plans into live onchain strategies.
Custody does not remove protocol risk
Anchorage provides custody services designed to support the compliance and transparent reporting standards that public companies are held to. Staking and restaking still bring exposure to smart contract bugs, protocol failures and liquid tokens trading at a discount to the underlying ETH.
Restaking in particular layers additional obligations on top of standard staking. Qualified custody addresses who holds the keys and how it gets reported, but it does not eliminate the risks inside the protocols themselves.
Source: Crypto Briefing
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
