VanEck has withdrawn its registration for a planned Lido Staked Ethereum ETF, filing the request with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 14. The move comes about a year after the asset manager first sought approval for the product, which would have paid staking rewards through the stETH token.
VanEck originally filed its registration application on October 16, 2025. Investors depositing Ether with the Lido staking protocol receive stETH in return, a token designed to represent staked ETH plus accrued rewards while remaining tradeable. The ETF would have used that mechanism to pass staking yield through to shareholders, a structure that sets it apart from most spot Ethereum products currently trading in the United States.
The withdrawal lands at a difficult moment for Ethereum-linked funds. US spot Ethereum ETFs recorded net outflows of 825 million US dollars in the first two weeks of October alone, a sign that enthusiasm for ETH exposure through regulated wrappers has faded compared with earlier in the year.
Lido's role in Ethereum staking
Lido remains the largest staking protocol on Ethereum by a wide margin. More than 43 million ETH, or about 36 percent of circulating Ether, is currently staked to secure the network. Of that, 9.7 million ETH, worth roughly 24 billion US dollars, is staked through Lido, giving the protocol more than one-fifth of all staked Ether on the network.
That scale made Lido a natural partner for a US issuer looking to build a staking-enabled ETF, since liquidity and reliability in the underlying staking infrastructure are central to any product promising to pass through rewards to retail shareholders.
A different picture in Europe
The withdrawal is notable for European investors because VanEck already offers a comparable product on this side of the Atlantic. The firm runs an Ethereum ETN with a staking function in Europe, a structure that has operated for some time under the continent's exchange-traded product rules. That contrast underlines a persistent divergence between the two markets: European exchange-traded products have been able to incorporate staking yield directly, while US issuers have faced a slower and more uncertain path through the SEC's registration process.
With VanEck's Lido-linked ETF now shelved, at least for the time being, the gap between what is available to US and European investors in Ethereum staking products looks set to persist, even as both markets watch the same slowdown in demand for spot ETH exposure play out over October.
