Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley says Solana could achieve an edge over Ethereum within the staking exchange-traded fund (ETF) market, pointing to its design as extra favorable for traders.
Talking with Cointelegraph’s editor, Andrew Fenton, at Token2049 in Singapore, Horsley argued that Solana’s faster unstaking interval offers it a bonus over Ethereum. As an illustration, Ethereum’s withdrawal queue not too long ago reached new highs, whereas Solana’s sometimes clears sooner. Horsley mentioned that distinction issues for issuers who should be capable of return belongings to traders shortly.
“It’s an enormous drawback,” Horsley mentioned. “The ETFs want to have the ability to return belongings on a really quick timeframe. So this can be a large problem.”
Staking includes locking up cryptocurrency to assist safe a community in return for rewards paid in the identical token. As a result of the belongings are locked, withdrawals can face delays as they fluctuate primarily based on community demand.
Horsley famous that Ethereum-based merchandise can work across the subject. As an illustration, Bitwise’s Ethereum staking exchange-traded product (ETP) in Europe makes use of a credit score facility to maintain redemptions liquid. Such amenities, nonetheless, come at a price and have “capability constraints,” he mentioned.
One other different is liquid staking tokens resembling Lido’s stETH, which symbolize staked belongings and permit traders to stay liquid whereas nonetheless incomes rewards.
Horsley’s feedback come after Ethereum’s staking entry queue climbed to 860,369 ETH in early September, the best degree since 2023.
The ETH staking queue presently stands at 201,984 ETH, with a mean wait time of about three days. The exit queue is way longer, roughly 34 days, with greater than 2 million staked tokens awaiting withdrawal, in line with onchain information.
Associated: Nasdaq recordsdata utility so as to add staking for BlackRock iShares ETH ETF
SOL and ETH ETFs face October deadlines
The US Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) is about to determine on a number of pending purposes for Solana and Ethereum exchange-traded funds within the coming weeks, together with proposals with staking options.
Amongst them are Solana ETFs from Bitwise, Constancy, Franklin Templeton, CoinShares, Grayscale Investments, Canary Capital, and VanEck — all of which filed amended S-1 paperwork with the SEC to replace their present funds’ staking provisions.
In August, the SEC delayed selections to approve Ether staking on two ETFs from Grayscale to the tip of October.
Staking approval for BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Belief was additionally pushed again to Oct. 30.
As Cointelegraph not too long ago reported, 16 crypto-related funds are awaiting selections from the SEC this month.