BNY to offer staking through Figment on its custody platform, starting with ETH

Bank of New York Mellon will let eligible institutional clients stake crypto held in its Digital Asset Custody service, using validator infrastructure from Figment, Figment said Thursday in a statement reported by The Block. Ether will be supported first, with Solana to follow, a Figment spokesperson told The Block. No launch date was given.

The offering is aimed at asset managers, ETF issuers, corporates, and wealth management firms, Figment said. Eligible clients would earn staking rewards on supported assets without leaving BNY's existing custody platform. Fee terms, reward splits, and how much client AUM might be eligible were not disclosed.

BNY launched its digital asset custody service in October 2022, initially taking bitcoin and ether from select clients, per The Block. Last month, the bank and Ripple expanded a custody agreement to cover XRP and Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin, and said BNY clients would be able to mint and redeem RLUSD through the bank.

Figment, which says it serves more than 1,500 institutions, has an existing track record here: Coinbase Prime integrated its Ethereum staking in early 2024, and the two firms said that partnership had enabled more than $2 billion in staked assets by October 2025, when they added Solana, Cardano, and Sui.

Key facts

• BNY will support staking via Figment's validators on its Digital Asset Custody platform; ETH first, SOL to follow — Figment statement, via The Block (2026-11-12).
• No launch date, fees, or reward terms disclosed — The Block.
• Target clients: asset managers, ETF issuers, corporates, wealth managers — Figment.
• BNY custody launched October 2022 (BTC, ETH); expanded to XRP and RLUSD last month with Ripple — The Block.
• Figment serves 1,500+ institutions; Coinbase Prime tie-up enabled $2B+ staked by October 2025 — Figment/Coinbase, via The Block.

The real-world read

This is an announcement from Figment, the vendor that stands to earn fees from the deal — not an independent milestone. The only hard commitment disclosed is that the capability is coming; the things that would let anyone judge its scale or economics — a launch date, fee structure, reward split, and which assets or clients are actually live — are all absent. The executive quotes from BNY's Ralf Roth and Figment's Josh Deems are standard partnership-launch language about "trust" and "accountability," not substance. Worth noting the direction of travel: a 240-year-old custody bank layering yield-bearing staking onto regulated custody, following its recent RLUSD and XRP expansion. Whether that materializes at meaningful volume is unknown until the service goes live with terms attached.

Opinion, and whose

BNY's Roth framed the move as a shift from "simply accessing staking to how it is delivered" within a "trusted custody framework" — his characterization, as the bank selling the service. Figment's Deems cast it as giving clients "another way to participate" through existing workflows. Both are interested parties; treat the framing accordingly.

Sources

• The Block (reputable secondary), "BNY taps Figment to support staking on its digital asset custody platform," 2026-11-12 — sole source for all facts above; itself based on a Figment statement (an interested-party announcement) plus supplied executive quotes.

Not financial advice.