# BNY Taps Figment to Bring Staking Into Institutional Crypto Custody

> The collaboration will let eligible institutions stake supported assets through BNY’s custody platform, with Figment providing validator infrastructure.

By Eric Spivak · November 13, 2026

Canonical: https://blockster.com/bny-figment-institutional-staking-digital-asset-custody

[BNY](https://www.bny.com/) is bringing staking closer to the custody services institutions already use. A collaboration announced by [Figment on November 12](https://www.figment.io/insights/figment-collaborates-with-bny-to-support-staking-on-bnys-digital-asset-custody-platform/) will give eligible clients access to staking through BNY's Digital Asset Custody platform, using Figment's validator infrastructure.

The intended users include asset managers, ETF issuers, corporate clients and wealth managers. For those firms, the appeal is an integrated process for holding supported digital assets and participating in the networks behind them.

[Post from @Figment\_io on X](https://twitter.com/Figment_io/status/2120864883977630050)

## Custody and validation do different jobs

BNY provides the custody and servicing relationship. Figment supplies the validator infrastructure that supports staking. The company says it serves more than **1,500 institutional clients** across its business; that is not a count of customers using this BNY arrangement.

In proof-of-stake systems, validators help verify transactions and maintain the network. Assets committed to that process can earn protocol rewards. As [Ethereum's staking documentation explains](https://ethereum.org/staking/), those rewards come with responsibilities and risks, including penalties for a validator going offline and more severe slashing penalties for certain prohibited behavior.

That makes the operational setup important. A custody team and a validator operator perform different functions, and an institution needs to understand where each party's responsibility begins and ends.

## What clients still need to evaluate

A Figment spokesperson [told The Block](https://www.theblock.co/news/business/2026-11-12-bny-taps-figment-to-support-staking-on-its-digital-asset-custody-platform-438538) that ETH will be supported first, followed by SOL. The companies have not specified a launch date or published a fee schedule. Access is for eligible institutions.

For an institution considering the service, useful questions include how rewards are reported, how withdrawals work and who handles an incident. A headline reward rate alone would not answer those questions.

> “As institutional participation in staking grows, the focus is shifting from simply accessing staking to how it is delivered.”
>
> — Ralf Roth, Head of Digital Asset Custody, BNY

Staking rewards also should not be mistaken for a fixed deposit rate. Ethereum's [rewards and penalties framework](https://ethereum.org/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/rewards-and-penalties/) ties outcomes to validator participation and network conditions. A professional service can manage operations, but it does not remove the underlying protocol rules or an asset's price exposure.

## Banks are adding services around digital holdings

Blockster previously covered [OpenEden bringing exposure to a BNY Investments high-yield bond fund to BNB Chain](https://blockster.com/openeden-brings-bnys-high-yield-bond-fund-to-bnb-chain). That product provides exposure to corporate credit. Staking instead earns rewards through blockchain participation, so the sources of income and risk are different.

The broader business direction is similar: institutions want to do more with digital holdings than store them. For BNY and Figment, the commercial test is whether integrating custody and staking makes participation easier to administer—and whether eligible clients choose to use it.