Ethereum Foundation Begins Staking 70,000 ETH From Treasury


The Ethereum Foundation has started staking a portion of its $ETH treasury, depositing an initial 2,016 $ETH into Ethereum's staking deposit contract on Tuesday, with plans to stake approximately 70,000 $ETH in total. All staking rewards will flow back into the foundation's treasury to fund protocol research and development, ecosystem development, and grants programs.


The move aligns with the foundation's treasury policy announced in June 2025, which outlined a shift toward actively deploying treasury assets rather than holding them passively.


Under that policy, the organization committed to pursuing returns while supporting Ethereum's decentralized finance ecosystem and maintaining sufficient liquidity for operations and long-term initiatives.


The initial deposit is now in the validator activation queue pending full activation.


To execute the staking initiative, the foundation is using open-source infrastructure developed by Bitwise's Attestant, specifically the Dirk and Vouch tools.


Dirk functions as a distributed key signer, splitting validator operations across multiple jurisdictions and operators so that no single machine or provider represents a point of failure. Vouch coordinates the validator client operations as part of the overall staking setup.

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February 24, 2026 at 8:36 PM
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