As the global virtual asset market accelerates compliance, Hong Kong's position as Asia's Web3 hub is becoming increasingly prominent. In February 2025, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) released the "ASPI-Re" roadmap, proposing to explore virtual asset pledge services and emphasizing the provision of regulated on-chain income channels for investors while enhancing blockchain security.
On April 7, 2025, the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission issued a circular allowing the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission's licensed virtual asset trading platforms to apply to it for staking services. Four days later, Bosera International and HashKey Capital announced that the Bosera HashKey Ethereum ETF jointly launched by the two parties has been approved by the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission and will support the Ethereum staking function from April 25, 2025. This is the first spot virtual asset ETF in Asia Pacific that supports Ethereum staking.
It is reported that HashKey Cloud provides staking services for the ETF through its flagship staking product ETF Staking Pro. This has aroused the curiosity of the market as to why HashKey Cloud was able to implement this compliant staking service case just two months after the policy was released, and solve the problems of "asset custody security" and "income distribution transparency" in the staking service.
Top 10 in the world, with nearly 4 billion USD in assets under management
HashKey Cloud is one of the core business units of HashKey Group focusing on Web3 infrastructure, and its history can be traced back to HashQuark in 2018.
As early as the eve of the outbreak of the PoS track, HashKey Cloud took the lead in proposing the concept of "Staking + Ecosystem Service Provider". In addition to providing node operation and maintenance and technical support, it also integrated project resources, ecological cooperation and market promotion to help PoS projects achieve breakthroughs in community building, compliance docking and capital introduction. It is precisely with this "technology + ecology" dual-wheel drive model that HashKey Cloud successfully attracted a round A financing led by Qiming Venture Partners in 2020, followed by many well-known institutions such as Fenbushi Capital, HashKey Capital, and Hash Global, becoming one of the few staking service providers favored by traditional VCs.
Later, with the accelerated layout of HashKey Group in the global compliance crypto-financial landscape, HashKey Cloud became an important pillar of the group's "fintech + regulatory technology" strategy. The latest data shows that HashKey Cloud has provided node services for 80+ mainstream PoS public chains to global users, including Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, Solana, Sui, etc., covering the most emerging ecosystems with the greatest growth potential.
In terms of asset management scale, the node assets verified by HashKey Cloud have exceeded 3.8 billion USDT, not only ranking among the top three in Asia, but also among the top ten node service providers in the world.
In terms of technology and security, HashKey Cloud has built a highly available, multi-redundant, and automated infrastructure architecture to ensure that all verification nodes run 24/7 without interruption. Its platform has built-in risk control mechanisms such as real-time monitoring, abnormal response, key isolation, and multi-authentication. Combined with HashKey Group's trading platform and asset management license, it has achieved a closed-loop compliance process from transaction matching, asset custody to on-chain staking and income distribution. This end-to-end, integrated service capability enables institutional investors to participate in on-chain consensus safely and efficiently without transferring underlying assets and enjoy stable staking income. Data shows that HashKey Cloud's asset security score is 98.21%, which is leading the industry.
The right time, right place, and right people
Among all service providers, HashKey Cloud is able to become the staking service provider of Ethereum ETF by relying on its flagship product ETF Staking Pro, which is inseparable from the right time, place and people.
As a local compliance pioneer in Hong Kong, HashKey Group's HashKey Exchange has already obtained a virtual asset trading platform license issued by the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission, providing strong support for HashKey Cloud to enter the ETF pledge field.
Secondly, HashKey Cloud has accumulated rich experience in mainnet launch and node operation and maintenance due to its long-term technical accumulation. HashKey Cloud has supported Ethereum staking since 2020, and has operated approximately 32,000 Ethereum verification nodes, maintaining zero slashing events and zero asset losses, and creating more than 11,936 ETH of staking income for users. At the same time, ETF Staking Pro has a four-layer anti-penalty mechanism, real-time API and Dashboard monitoring, and a transparent staking process that supports on-chain verification, which almost meets all the requirements of fund managers for "ultra-low risk and full traceability." (*Staking refers to node validation/infrastructure services and does not constitute an investment or financial product.)
More importantly, HashKey Cloud is an excellent choice in the current market. HashKey Cloud has completed the product development and compliance model verification of ETF Staking Pro long before the ETF was officially approved. This enables it to quickly access the fund manager system after the approval of Bosera HashKey Ethereum ETF, provide end-to-end staking technology solutions and operation and maintenance support, and ensure that the ETF has compliant, secure and transparent on-chain income capabilities from the beginning of its launch.
In fact, providing staking services for the Ethereum spot ETF is not a simple product integration. Its significance lies in that it provides traditional investors with an entry point for obtaining native on-chain returns without transferring assets or increasing credit risk for the first time. This income mainly comes from the dual incentives of the Ethereum consensus layer and the execution layer. The former provides rewards for network block generation, and the latter comes from transaction fees and maximum achievable value (MEV).
According to the 2024 annual report disclosed by HashKey Cloud, HashKey Cloud's annual interest rate for Ethereum staking has reached 3.5%, exceeding the average annual interest rate of 3.3% of the Ethereum network. And HashKey Cloud supports reinvesting staking rewards into funds to achieve compound growth. This rate of return even exceeds many traditional bonds and money market instruments, providing institutional investors with a more attractive "income" solution.
In addition, compared with the traditional ETF's way of increasing returns through lending mechanisms, staking does not have the risk of asset misappropriation and short selling, nor does it have the possibility of counterparty default. Previously, Buffett had expressed his pessimism about gold because gold assets do not generate returns. The "zero transfer" income structure provided by ETF Staking Pro provides investors with a more stable way to increase value, especially suitable for conservative institutional funds represented by insurance, pensions, and sovereign wealth funds.
More importantly, the staking process is completely verifiable on the chain, and with real-time data monitoring tools and regular audit reports, it provides unprecedented transparency for regulators and investors. This not only reshapes people’s understanding of “currency holding income” under the compliance framework, but also sets a new benchmark for the entire crypto asset ETF market.
On-chain income + compliance, a new era of alternative asset allocation
The pledge service supervision guidelines issued by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission on April 7, 2025 pushed compliance pledge to the "active empowerment" stage, providing the industry with a replicable regulatory sandbox model. Under this policy framework, HashKey Cloud relies on the full-stack ecological advantages of HashKey Group to provide institutions with an integrated solution from trading to pledge, from custody to liquidity management.
For a long time, regulatory uncertainty and technical barriers have been two major barriers that prevent institutional investors from entering the crypto market. The launch of ETF Staking Pro embeds the on-chain income mechanism of Ethereum staking into ETF products regulated by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, realizing the compliance design of "zero asset transfer". All ETH is always held and managed by the licensed custodian HashKey Exchange, and there is no need to migrate assets between different platforms. Fund managers only need to hold corresponding ETF shares to participate in staking and enjoy the benefits in the background. All staking processes are verifiable and auditable on the chain, truly realizing the triple guarantee of "compliance + transparency + efficiency".
What is more noteworthy is that HashKey Exchange, a trading platform under HashKey Group, has not only obtained regulatory approval in Hong Kong, but has also been awarded virtual asset service licenses in Singapore, Japan, Bermuda and Ireland, and has obtained the principle approval of Dubai Virtual Asset Service Provider. Diversified fiat currency channels and cross-border licenses enable ETF Staking Pro to not only deepen its presence in the local market, but also attract global capital to gather in Hong Kong, becoming a bridgehead for international institutions to enter on-chain returns.
In addition, ETF Staking Pro provides real-time monitoring, and fund managers can audit the generation and distribution of each staking income at any time. More importantly for traditional investors, the annualized staking income of about 4% can directly offset the ETF management fee, bringing investors a double return of "price appreciation + protocol income". This model not only attracts pension funds and insurance funds that pursue stable returns, but is also expected to push the size of the crypto ETF market from the current 100 million level to the trillion level.
Looking ahead, as more traditional assets are put on the chain and compliant pledge services mature, "income + compliance" is becoming a new paradigm for alternative asset allocation. Here, on-chain income is no longer equivalent to speculation, and the boundaries between digital assets and traditional finance are constantly merging.
Disclaimer:
HashKey Cloud does not provide services to or accept users from certain jurisdictions, including but not limited to Afghanistan, Algeria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Central Africa, Congo, Cuba, Gaza Strip, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Egypt, Haiti, Hong Kong (except for professional investors as defined in the Securities and Futures Ordinance), Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe, United States, American Samoa, Bangladesh, Guam, Puerto Rico and Northern Mariana Islands. Please confirm that you are not a user from and/or located in the aforementioned jurisdictions.
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