Canadian investment firm Wealthsimple added support for staking Ethereum and Solana assets.
Wealthsimple’s Ethereum staking product provides rewards up to 3% APY. It requires users to deposit a minimum of 0.01 ETH ($15) before they can begin staking.
Currently, it is impossible to un-stake Ethereum assets. This feature will be available once the Shanghai update releases in 2023.
There is a delay in rewards (called warm-up period) the first time when users stake their assets with Wealthsimple. Ethereum has a warm-up period of 14 days. After that, rewards are paid out every 7 days.
Wealthsimple has a lower minimum deposit amount of 0.02 SOL ($0.6) for staking Solana. The reward earned by staking Solana is 3.5% APY after deducting a 30% staking fee.
The firm provides a shorter warm-up period of 4-8 days for staking Solana and pays out subsequent rewards every 2-3 days.
Wealthsimple provides Ethereum staking using Coinbase's validator nodes. Its Solana staking product operates via the validator nodes operated by Staked, a crypto platform that was acquired by Kraken in 2021. Danish Ajmeri, Wealthsimple‘s Head of Crypto, claimed that the firm will add more validators in the future, adding,
“Validator diversity is very important to us!”
It is worth noting that Wealthsimple does not protect investors from the slashing risks associated with staking Ethereum.
