Anchorage adds Lido to offer institutional wstETH access

Anchorage Digital, the United States’ first federally regulated crypto bank, has integrated with Lido to let institutional clients mint and burn wstETH from within the Anchorage platform.

The connection allows customers to open the Lido decentralized application inside Anchorage’s interface to convert staked ETH into Lido’s wrapped staked token, wstETH, and to redeem wstETH back to underlying positions. Staking, custody and governance functions will remain within Anchorage’s regulated custody and governance controls.

wstETH accrues Ethereum staking rewards while remaining transferable and compatible with decentralized finance markets. Institutional holders can use wstETH as collateral, deploy it in yield strategies, or trade it on secondary markets without withdrawing the underlying stake or operating validator infrastructure. The token provides liquidity without the long unbonding periods associated with native staking.

Anchorage said the integration is designed to keep custody and staking operations consolidated in a single regulated environment and to limit the need for institutions to split services across multiple providers. Nathan McCauley, co-founder and chief executive of Anchorage Digital, said: “Exposure to Ethereum staking yield in a liquid, transferable form, held under Anchorage Digital’s leading secure custody and governance controls.”

Lido is the largest liquid staking protocol on Ethereum and wstETH has broad integrations across lending markets, decentralized exchanges and cross-chain protocols. Kean Gilbert, head of institutional relations at the Lido Ecosystem Foundation, described the integration as placing wstETH “into an important US institutional platform” and added that it “strengthens the role of stETH and the Lido protocol in institutional Ethereum staking.”

Anchorage presented the integration as part of its effort to offer institutional access to onchain primitives including staking, liquid staking, restaking, governance and settlement on a single platform, while keeping service and compliance controls inside a federally regulated custody framework.