21shares Extends 100% Fee Waiver on Ethereum Staking ETF Through October 2027

21shares extends zero-fee Ethereum staking ETF for another year

21shares has extended the 100 percent sponsor fee waiver on its Ethereum Staking ETF, ticker TETH, for an additional twelve months through October 8, 2027, giving US investors another year of zero-cost exposure to ether plus staking yield. The announcement, made on October 6, 2026, underscores how fiercely issuers are competing for flows in the maturing market for yield-bearing crypto exchange-traded products.

The fee waiver was originally introduced alongside the integration of staking features in October 2025. By extending it, 21shares is effectively telling investors they can capture Ethereum’s native staking rewards through a regulated wrapper without paying the issuer a cent. The waiver applies automatically to all current and prospective shareholders, with no action required.

Through staking, the trust participates in Ethereum’s network validation process, enabling investors to benefit from the yield-generating potential of the protocol. The net staking reward, after the deduction of fees and expenses, stood at 2.65 percent as of October 1, 2026, a meaningful yield in an environment where investors increasingly compare crypto products against traditional fixed income.

Extending our fee waiver for an additional 12 months underscores our commitment to providing investors with cost-efficient access to Ethereum, said Duncan Moir, President and Chief Investment Officer at 21shares. By combining a 100% fee waiver with the yield-generating power of network staking, we are continuing to pass the native benefits of blockchain technology directly back to our investors at zero cost.

The staking ETF arms race

The extension lands in the middle of an industry-wide shift: staking is becoming the default expectation for ether funds. BlackRock, Grayscale, Fidelity and 21Shares have all committed to staking within their ether products, and funds that do not stake now face a visible yield disadvantage against those that do. For advisers and institutions comparing ether ETFs side by side, the difference between a staking and a non-staking product is no longer theoretical; it shows up directly in performance.

Fee competition has intensified alongside the staking race. Issuers learned from the bitcoin ETF fee wars that early market share, once captured, tends to be sticky, and several have used temporary waivers to accelerate asset gathering. A 100 percent waiver is the most aggressive possible version of that strategy: the issuer earns nothing on the management fee and bets instead that scale, securities-lending revenue and long-term loyalty will eventually pay off.

The strategy appears to be working across the category. Ether ETFs as a group have pulled in substantial assets through 2026, with cumulative net inflows reflecting sustained institutional interest even through periods of price weakness. The staking yield gives these products a story that plain spot exposure cannot match: investors are not just betting on the price of ether, they are earning the network’s native reward for securing it.

Why staking inside an ETF matters

For most investors, staking ether directly is impractical. Running a validator requires 32 ETH, dedicated infrastructure and constant operational attention, along with exposure to slashing penalties if the validator misbehaves. Liquid staking tokens solve some of these problems but introduce smart-contract and peg risks of their own, as markets were reminded when large validator exits tested stETH liquidity dynamics.

A staking ETF packages the economics of staking into the familiar, regulated wrapper of an exchange-traded fund. Investors get exposure to ether’s price plus a share of staking rewards, without managing keys, choosing validators or monitoring uptime. The trade-off is counterparty reliance on the issuer and its staking providers, plus the fee layer, which is precisely what the waiver eliminates for the next year.

The 2.65 percent net staking reward cited by 21shares reflects the current economics of Ethereum validation after validator growth compressed yields from the higher levels seen in earlier years. As more ether gets staked, rewards per validator decline, a dynamic built into the protocol. Issuers compete partly on how efficiently they capture that yield for shareholders after their own costs.

The fine print investors should read

A zero fee does not mean zero cost. Investors still bear the market risk of ether itself, which remains volatile, and the staking yield, while real, fluctuates with network conditions. The waiver is also temporary by design: it runs through October 8, 2027, after which 21shares may reinstate a sponsor fee. Investors who choose the product for its zero-cost structure should understand what the economics look like when the waiver expires.

There is also concentration to consider. As staking consolidates within a handful of large ETF issuers and their chosen providers, questions about validator centralisation resurface. Ethereum’s security model benefits from a diverse, decentralised validator set, and the migration of stake into institutional products is a trend the ecosystem continues to debate.

What the extension signals about 2027

Issuers do not extend 100 percent fee waivers unless they believe the growth runway justifies it. The twelve-month extension suggests 21shares expects the ether ETF category, and particularly the staking segment, to keep expanding well into 2027. With the Glamsterdam upgrade progressing through test networks and bringing protocol-level changes to staking economics, the product landscape for staked ether exposure is still evolving.

Competitors are unlikely to stand still. If zero-fee staking products continue gathering assets at the expense of fee-charging rivals, pressure will build across the category to match. For investors, that competitive dynamic is welcome: it means more of Ethereum’s native yield flowing through to shareholders and less captured as issuer margin.

The broader lesson is that crypto ETFs have entered their second act. The first act was about access, giving traditional investors regulated exposure to bitcoin and ether. The second act is about the native economics of the underlying networks: staking rewards, and eventually perhaps other forms of onchain yield, delivered through familiar wrappers. 21shares’ wager is that the issuer which delivers those economics most cheaply will win the category, and it has just given itself another year to prove it.

How the fee war is reshaping ether ETFs

The zero-fee gambit follows a playbook written during the bitcoin ETF fee wars, when issuers slashed headline fees and rolled out temporary waivers to win the land grab for assets in the first months after launch. The logic is simple: ETF assets are sticky, and the lifetime value of an investor captured early dwarfs a year of forgone management fees. Several bitcoin issuers used the same tactic to gather billions before gradually normalising their fee schedules.

What makes the ether version more interesting is the staking layer. A bitcoin ETF competes almost entirely on fee and brand, because every fund holds the same asset with the same economics. An ether staking ETF competes on fee, brand and staking efficiency: how much of the network’s native yield actually reaches shareholders after the issuer’s validators, infrastructure costs and cut. A 100 percent fee waiver does not just remove the management charge; it signals confidence that the product’s staking implementation can stand comparison with any rival’s.

Rivals are watching closely. With BlackRock, Grayscale and Fidelity all committed to staking, the category is converging on a standard where a non-staking ether fund looks increasingly like an inferior product. The next competitive front is likely to be staking yield optimisation itself, with issuers competing on validator performance, MEV capture and the efficiency of their operations, all passed through to shareholders.

Glamsterdam and the future of staking yields

The economics that TETH shareholders capture are themselves about to evolve. Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade, the next major protocol change, reached the Sepolia test network on October 6, 2026, although the Ethereum Foundation says a mainnet date has not been decided. Among its staking changes, the most significant is the move to handle payments from block builders to validators inside the protocol itself, replacing the third-party relays that validators must currently trust.

Glamsterdam also includes EIP-8061, which roughly quadruples the validator exit limit without changing the entry cap. Researchers estimate the current exit queue of around 786,000 ETH would clear in three to four days under the new limit, a dramatic acceleration from today’s weeks-long waits. For staking products, faster exits mean better liquidity management and tighter tracking between fund shares and underlying stake.

Longer term, the debate over issuance reform is waiting in the wings. With the staking ratio heading toward 40 percent of all ether, questions about whether Ethereum overpays for security will return, and any reduction in issuance would flow directly through to staking yields. For TETH shareholders enjoying a 2.65 percent net reward today, the trajectory of protocol-level rewards matters as much as the fee waiver: the waiver determines how much of the yield they keep, but the protocol determines how much yield exists to share.