SharpLink, the Nasdaq-listed company built around an Ethereum treasury, has moved $400 million worth of ETH onchain without letting the assets leave regulated custody. The custody partner is Anchorage Digital Bank, and the arrangement is being framed as the first time a public company has deployed ETH onchain while keeping its holdings with a qualified custodian.

How the $400 Million Was Split

SharpLink (Nasdaq: SBET) divided the deployment evenly across two of Ethereum's best-known staking platforms. The first $200 million went through ether.fi, where SharpLink minted weETH. The second $200 million went through Lido, producing wstETH. Both positions remain custodied by Anchorage Digital Bank, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States.

Both deployments were announced on or around October 19, 2026.

In staking, ETH is locked up to help secure the Ethereum network in exchange for rewards. A liquid staking token such as wstETH acts as a receipt for that staked ETH plus accumulated rewards, and it can still be moved or used elsewhere. Restaking goes a step further: it takes staked ETH and puts it to work securing additional services, and weETH is ether.fi's token for that position.

The ether.fi leg carries its own milestone: it marks the first time a public company has minted a liquid restaking token while holding it in qualified custody.

Why Custody Is the Real Story

Qualified custody means assets sit with a regulated institution that meets the standards applied to safeguarding client funds, rather than with an unregulated intermediary. Anchorage provides custody services designed to support the compliance and transparent reporting standards to which public companies are held — the practical bridge between onchain activity and the reporting and audit obligations that come with a Nasdaq listing. SharpLink, for its part, has emphasized its commitment to public disclosure and risk management. Because the structure is framed as a first, it also offers a reference point for how a public company can put ETH to work onchain without stepping outside those obligations.

A Treasury That Pays for Itself

SharpLink holds approximately 900,000 ETH, a position that ranks among the largest corporate holdings of the asset anywhere. The company has already accumulated staking rewards totaling tens of millions of dollars, a figure it reached without buying additional ETH — an indication of the yield a treasury of this size can generate from holdings alone. The new deployments put a slice of that stack to work across ether.fi and Lido.

The move follows earlier groundwork. In October 2025, SharpLink outlined plans for a deployment on Linea, an Ethereum layer-2 network. In August 2026, the company committed to staking with Lido. The new ether.fi and Lido positions represent the first major steps in turning those plans into live onchain strategies.

What It Means for Corporate Treasuries

Risks remain worth keeping in view. Staking and restaking introduce to smart contract bugs, protocol failures, and the mechanics of liquid tokens trading at a discount to the underlying ETH. The even split between ether.fi and Lido means that exposure runs through two independent sets of smart contracts rather than one. Restaking in particular layers additional obligations on top of standard staking: more layers can mean more yield, but they also mean more things that can go wrong.

Qualified custody addresses one question — who holds the keys and how the arrangement gets reported. It does not eliminate the risks baked into the protocols themselves.

The next round of disclosures should show how much of SharpLink's 900,000 ETH is actually put to work — and whether the Linea deployment first outlined in October 2025 follows.