VanEck Digital Assets, LLC has filed a Form RW with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requesting withdrawal of the registration statement for its VanEck Lido Staked Ethereum ETF, citing its decision not to proceed with the planned distribution of the trust's shares. The filing, submitted on October 14, 2026, closes out File No. 333-290918 before the registration statement was ever declared effective.

What VanEck requested from the SEC

VanEck Digital Assets invoked Securities Act Rule 477 to withdraw the Form S-1 it originally submitted on October 16, 2025. The Form RW states explicitly that the registration statement was never declared effective and that no securities were issued, sold, or distributed under it. No preliminary prospectus was circulated to potential investors at any point during the roughly 12-month window in which the filing was pending — an outcome consistent with the mechanics of a registered offering, since shares cannot be marketed to the public until the SEC declares the registration statement effective. For readers following the filing lifecycle, a withdrawal at this stage removes the product from the regulatory pipeline before any offering documents or trading history ever came into existence.

Rule 477 allows a registrant to withdraw a registration statement before it becomes effective, provided the SEC consents. The Form RW constitutes VanEck's request for that consent; it does not, by itself, represent an SEC order granting the withdrawal. Withdrawals under the rule are administrative steps that carry no adverse finding against a registrant. The request formally ends a registration process that began more than a year before the withdrawal was filed.

VanEck cites no reasons beyond abandoning the share distribution

VanEck's stated ground for the withdrawal is that the sponsor does not intend to proceed with the planned distribution of the trust's shares. The filing does not identify any commercial, regulatory, or market-structure reasons for that decision, and Rule 477 imposes no obligation on a registrant to justify the choice in business terms.

VanEck has remained active across other digital asset registration efforts. Earlier this year, the firm updated its BNB ETF filing to add a staking objective, signaling continued engagement with yield-bearing crypto structures in other product lines.

What the withdrawal means for the proposed ETF

As described in the original S-1 prospectus, the proposed trust's investment objective was to reflect the price performance of Lido's stETH token, less operating expenses. The prospectus described stETH as a liquid staking token representing deposited ETH plus accrued staking rewards, a structure that sits within the broader liquid staking token (LST) category of restaking-adjacent DeFi primitives.

Because the S-1 was never declared effective and no shares were ever issued, investors have no outstanding exposure to unwind. The vehicle never listed or traded, so the withdrawal brings no delisting, fund closure, or liquidation event for holders to track. Ethereum was quoted at $2,419.62, down 3.13% over 24 hours, at the time of the market snapshot accompanying this report.

The withdrawal is specific to this Lido stETH-based product and does not affect VanEck's other digital asset registrations. Any future attempt to revive a similar stETH-tracking wrapper would require a fresh S-1 filing and a new SEC review cycle. In the near term, the procedural step to watch is the SEC's response to the Form RW: the withdrawal takes effect only once the commission grants its consent, and the resulting order will appear on EDGAR.