The Ethereum Foundation has begun staking some of its treasury holdings, putting around 70,000 ETH to work as part of its plan to support ongoing operations in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The stake started with a deposit of 2,016 ETH and uses Dirk and Vouch, open source validation tools developed by infrastructure company Attestant, the Foundation said.
Dirk functions as a distributed signer enabling coordination across multiple jurisdictions and reducing single points of failure, while Vouch handles validation tasks.
The decision comes after the publication of the Foundation’s treasury policy. last year to manage cryptocurrency and fiat holdings in a way that balances long-term sustainability with Ethereum-aligned values such as decentralization, open source access, and user privacy.
Instead of letting ETH sit idle, the Foundation now plans to earn staking rewards and redirect them back toward funding protocol research, ecosystem development, and community grants.
According to CoinDesk’s Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR), the current staking yield of the Ethereum validator population is around 2,808%. Data from Arkham Intelligence shows that the Ethereum Foundation currently has 172,650 ETH that it could deploy, along with an additional 10,000 wrapped ether (WETH).
The staking setup uses a combination of hosted infrastructure and self-managed hardware, including minority clients, spread across multiple countries, the Foundation said.
