ETH Yield

ETH liquid staking lets you earn Ethereum's protocol-level staking yield (currently 3-4% APR) without locking your ETH in a validator. You deposit ETH with a staking protocol (Lido, Rocket Pool, Mantle, Ether.fi), which runs the validators on your behalf and issues you a liquid token (stETH, rETH, mETH, weETH) that represents your staked position. The token accrues yield over time and remains transferable, so it can be used as collateral in DeFi while still earning staking rewards.

wstETH is the wrapped, non-rebasing version of Lido's stETH — the largest ETH liquid-staking token by AUM. Lido distributes ETH across a curated set of node operators and has been in market since 2020 with no slashing-loss events affecting holders. The structural risks are smart-contract bugs in the Lido staking router, validator-level slashing if individual operators misbehave (socialized across the pool), and the underlying Ethereum protocol risks. The RWTS Trust Score rates wstETH on validator decentralization, audit history, and the cushion Lido maintains for slashing losses.

wstETH (Lido) and rETH (Rocket Pool) take different approaches to the same goal. Lido runs a curated permissioned set of professional node operators — higher operational reliability, but more validator concentration. Rocket Pool runs a permissionless network of operators who each post ETH and RPL collateral — more decentralized, but smaller scale and slightly higher operational variance. wstETH has deeper DeFi liquidity and broader collateral acceptance. rETH has stronger decentralization properties and a built-in slashing cushion via operator collateral. Compare the live Trust Scores in the table above.

ETH staking yield is determined by the Ethereum protocol and currently sits around 3-4% APR, depending on the total amount of ETH staked network-wide and on MEV revenue captured by validators. Liquid-staking protocols pass through this yield less a fee (typically 10-15% of rewards, equivalent to ~30-60 bps on the gross yield). Restaking products (weETH via Ether.fi) layer additional rewards from EigenLayer and partner protocols on top, but those rewards carry incremental smart-contract and slashing risk.

Yes, but with a queue. Since Shapella (April 2023), validators can exit and ETH can be withdrawn. Lido has a built-in withdrawal queue that processes wstETH→ETH exits in days to weeks depending on network demand. Rocket Pool, Mantle, and Ether.fi each have their own queue mechanics. For instant exits, all of these tokens have deep secondary liquidity on Curve, Uniswap, and Balancer — typically trading within a few basis points of ETH parity, occasionally wider during stress.

Restaking lets you take an already-staked ETH position (e.g., from Lido or Ether.fi) and pledge it as economic security for additional protocols built on EigenLayer or similar networks. weETH (Ether.fi) is the most widely held restaked-ETH token. The upside is incremental yield from those additional services; the downside is that your ETH is now exposed to slashing conditions from multiple protocols, not just Ethereum consensus. Restaked products sit in the Tier 4 (synthetic/structured) bucket in the RWTS methodology and score lower on backing than vanilla liquid stakers.

Every asset gets a Trust Score on a 100-point scale across six dimensions: backing (25 pts) — quality and proof of the staked ETH reserve; verification (20 pts) — validator transparency and on-chain monitoring; redeemability (15 pts) — withdrawal queue mechanics and secondary liquidity; audit (15 pts) — staking-router and contract audit posture; regulatory (15 pts) — issuer compliance and jurisdiction; and trackRecord (10 pts) — time in market and slashing/incident history. Tier 3 (vanilla LSTs) typically scores above Tier 4 (restaked variants). See the full methodology page.