Ethereum hits highest price in over a month as BlackRock joins the fray of ethereum staking ETFs

Ethereum climbed to its highest level in over a month, briefly touching $2,200 on Friday. The price swing comes amidst a new change among ETFs focused on the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

Yesterday, ETHB — BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF Shares — started trading on Nasdaq, making the investment vehicle the first from the financial titan to include staking, the process of locking up tokens to help secure the network’s consensus mechanism in exchange for rewards. 

The nascent staking ETF has nearly $150 million in net assets, drawing in $43.5 million in inflows on its first day, data from SoSoValue shows. “Pretty good start for any ETF,” Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart noted in a social media post.

While ETHB is BlackRock’s first ethereum staking ETF, it’s not first to market. The Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF launched in 2024, while the REX-Osprey ETH Staking ETF rolled out last year. 

Ethereum ETFs have seen nearly $157.7 million of inflows in March, on track to record their first monthly inflow since October. 

Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation published its mandate, “a document that serves as part constitution, part manifesto, and part guide for the Ethereum Foundation,” on Friday. 

“Our Mandate to EF states what must be cherished to protect the ultimate reason for Ethereum’s existence: user self-sovereignty,” the Ethereum Foundation Board wrote. “To be a part of EF, our own teams must remember that Ethereum must, above all, remain censorship resistant, open source, private, and secure (CROPS).”

The mandate is a new chapter in how the organization views its position in the world, according to ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin. “We must see ourselves not just as the Ethereum community, but also as  maintainers of the Ethereum tool within what you might call the CROPS community,” Buterin said. “This means open-mindedness to new conceptions of what things in the world are our natural allies.”