In the wave of accelerating compliance in the global virtual asset market, Hong Kong's position as the Asian Web3 hub is becoming increasingly prominent. In February 2025, the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong (SFC) released the "A-S-P-I-Re" roadmap, proposing to explore virtual asset staking services and emphasizing providing regulated on-chain yield channels to investors while enhancing blockchain security.

On April 7, 2025, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission issued a circular allowing licensed virtual asset trading platforms in Hong Kong to apply to provide staking services. Four days later, Bosera International and HashKey Capital announced that their jointly launched Bosera HashKey Ethereum ETF had been approved by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and would support Ethereum staking starting from April 25, 2025. This is the Asia-Pacific's first spot virtual asset ETF supporting Ethereum staking.

It is reported that HashKey Cloud provides staking services for this ETF through its flagship staking product ETF Staking Pro. This has sparked market curiosity about how HashKey Cloud was able to implement this compliant staking service case within just two months after the policy's release, addressing issues such as "asset custody security" and "yield distribution transparency" in staking services.

Global Top Ten, Asset Management Scale Nearly $4 Billion

HashKey Cloud is one of the core business segments under HashKey Group focusing on Web3 infrastructure, with its history dating back to HashQuark in 2018.

Even before the dawn of the PoS race, HashKey Cloud first proposed the concept of "Staking+Ecosystem Service Provider." In addition to providing node operation and technical support, it also integrates project resources, ecosystem partnerships, and market promotion to help PoS projects make breakthroughs in community building, compliance integration, and capital introduction. It is with this "technology + ecosystem" dual-driven model that HashKey Cloud successfully attracted an A round of financing led by Sequoia Capital China in 2020, with follow-on investments from Fenbushi Capital, HashKey Capital, Hash Global, and other well-known institutions, becoming one of the few staking service providers favored by traditional VCs.

Subsequently, with HashKey Group's accelerated layout on the global compliant crypto financial map, HashKey Cloud has become a key pillar in the group's promotion of the "FinTech + RegTech" strategy. The latest data shows that HashKey Cloud has provided node services for over 80 mainstream PoS public chains to global users, including Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, Solana, Sui, etc., covering some of the most promising emerging ecosystems.

In terms of asset under management, the assets of nodes validated by HashKey Cloud have exceeded 3.8 billion USDT, not only ranking among the top three in Asia but also entering the top ten globally as a node service provider.

On the technical and security front, HashKey Cloud has built a highly available, multi-redundant, and automated infrastructure architecture to ensure all validation nodes run continuously 24/7. Its platform includes real-time monitoring, anomaly response, key isolation, and multi-factor authentication risk control mechanisms. Combined with HashKey Group's exchange platform and asset management license, it has achieved a closed-loop compliant process from trade matching and asset custody to on-chain staking and rewards distribution. This end-to-end, integrated service capability enables institutional investors to securely and efficiently participate in on-chain consensus without transferring underlying assets, enjoying stable staking rewards. Data shows that HashKey Cloud's asset security score is 98.21%, leading the industry.

Timing, Geography, and Harmony

Among a myriad of service providers, HashKey Cloud's ability to become the staking service provider for the Ethereum ETF with its flagship product ETF Staking Pro is not only due to its timing, geography, and harmony.

As a compliance pioneer in Hong Kong, HashKey Group, with its HashKey Exchange holding a virtual asset trading platform license issued by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, has provided strong support for HashKey Cloud's entry into the ETF staking field.

Secondly, HashKey Cloud's long-term technological accumulation has accumulated rich experience in mainnet deployment and node operations. Since 2020, HashKey Cloud has supported Ethereum staking, operating around 32,000 Ethereum validation nodes, maintaining zero Slashing events and zero asset loss, and generating over 11,936 ETH in staking rewards for users. Additionally, ETF Staking Pro features a four-layer penalty avoidance mechanism, real-time API and Dashboard monitoring, and a transparent staking process supporting on-chain validation, meeting almost all fund managers' requirements for "ultra-low risk and full traceability". (* Staking refers to node validation/infrastructure services and does not constitute an investment or financial product.)

More crucially, HashKey Cloud is an excellent choice in the current market. HashKey Cloud had already completed the R&D of ETF Staking Pro and compliance model verification before the ETF was officially approved. This allowed it to quickly integrate into fund managers' systems after Bo Shi HashKey Ethereum ETF approval, providing an end-to-end staking technical solution and operational support, ensuring that the ETF has compliant, secure, and transparent on-chain revenue capabilities from the outset.

In fact, providing collateralized staking services for an Ethereum spot ETF is not a simple product integration. Its significance lies in providing traditional investors with a first-time entry point to earn on-chain native rewards without transferring assets or increasing credit risk. This earnings primarily come from the dual incentives of the Ethereum consensus layer and execution layer, with the former providing network block rewards and the latter coming from transaction fees and Maximum Extractable Value (MEV).

According to HashKey Cloud's 2024 annual report, HashKey Cloud's Ethereum staking annual yield reached 3.5%, surpassing the Ethereum network's average annual yield of 3.3%. Additionally, HashKey Cloud supports reinvesting staking rewards into the fund for compound growth. This yield rate even exceeds many traditional bonds and money market instruments, providing institutional investors with a more attractive "yield" solution.

Furthermore, compared to traditional ETFs that enhance returns through lending mechanisms, staking has no asset misappropriation or short-selling risk and eliminates the possibility of counterparty default. Previously, Buffett had expressed his disapproval of gold assets due to their lack of yield. The "zero-transfer" yield structure provided by ETF Staking Pro offers investors a more robust appreciation method, especially suitable for conservative institutional funds represented by insurance, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds.

More importantly, the staking process is entirely verifiable on-chain, complemented by real-time data monitoring tools and regular audit reports, providing unprecedented transparency for regulatory agencies and investors. This not only reshapes people's understanding of "holding asset yield" within a compliance framework but also sets a new benchmark for the entire cryptocurrency ETF market.

On-chain Yield + Compliance, a New Era of Alternative Asset Allocation

The Pledging Service Regulatory Guidance issued by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission on April 7, 2025, has propelled compliant staking into an "actively empowering" stage, providing the industry with a replicable regulatory sandbox model. Under this policy framework, HashKey Cloud leverages the HashKey Group's full-stack ecosystem advantage to offer institutions an integrated solution ranging from trading to staking and from custody to liquidity management.

For a long time, regulatory uncertainty and technological barriers have been the two major obstacles preventing institutional investors from entering the crypto market. The launch of ETF Staking Pro embeds Ethereum staking, a chain-based revenue mechanism, into ETF products regulated by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, achieving a compliant design of "zero asset transfer." All ETH is always held and managed by the licensed custodian HashKey Exchange, with no need to migrate assets between different platforms. Fund managers only need to hold the corresponding ETF shares to participate in staking in the background and enjoy earnings. The entire staking process is verifiable and auditable on-chain, truly realizing a triple guarantee of "compliance + transparency + efficiency."

Of particular note is that the HashKey Exchange trading platform under the HashKey Group has not only obtained regulatory licenses in Hong Kong but has also been granted virtual asset service licenses in locations such as Singapore, Japan, Bermuda, and Ireland. It has also received a preliminary approval as a virtual asset service provider in Dubai. The platform's diversified fiat channels and cross-border licenses enable ETF Staking Pro to not only focus on the local market but also attract global capital to converge in Hong Kong, becoming a gateway for international institutions to participate in on-chain rewards.

Furthermore, ETF Staking Pro provides real-time monitoring, allowing fund managers to audit the generation and distribution of each staking reward at any time. Of particular importance to traditional investors is that the approximately 4% annual staking reward can directly offset the ETF management fee, providing investors with a dual return of "price appreciation + protocol rewards." This model has not only attracted pension funds and insurance funds seeking stable returns but also is expected to elevate the encrypted ETF market size from the current billion-dollar level to the trillion-dollar level.

Looking ahead, as more traditional assets migrate to the blockchain and compliant staking services mature, "rewards + compliance" is becoming a new paradigm for alternative asset allocation. Here, on-chain rewards are no longer synonymous with speculation, and the boundaries between digital assets and traditional finance are continuously merging.

Disclaimer:

HashKey Cloud does not offer services to certain jurisdictions or accept users from such jurisdictions. These jurisdictions include but are not limited to Afghanistan, Algeria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mainland China, Central African Republic, Congo, Cuba, Gaza Strip, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Egypt, Haiti, Hong Kong (excluding professional investors as defined in the Securities and Futures Ordinance), Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe, the United States, American Samoa, Bangladesh, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Northern Mariana Islands. Please confirm that you are not a user from and/or located in the aforementioned jurisdictions.

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