Morgan Stanley Files for Spot Ethereum and Solana ETFs With Staking at a 0.14% Fee

What Morgan Stanley filed

Morgan Stanley Investment Management, the money-management arm of the New York bank, used a pair of updated Form S-1 registration statements on June 18 to move two crypto funds closer to launch. One, the Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust, would hold Ether, the largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. The other, the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust, would hold Solana, a faster and lower-cost blockchain token. An exchange-traded fund, or ETF, is a basket that trades on an exchange like a single stock. Both trusts first registered with the SEC in January and would list on NYSE Arca under the tickers MSSE and MSOL.

Why a 0.14% fee matters

The fee is the headline. At 0.14% a year, an investor would pay about $14 for every $10,000 held, and Morgan Stanley has set that rate below what any other US sponsor charges on an Ethereum or Solana product. Crypto funds have been locked in a price war since the first spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in 2024, with sponsors cutting fees to pull in money. Morgan Stanley is a household Wall Street name rather than a crypto specialist, and undercutting the field on price is its way to stand out. The 0.14% charge is a single, all-in rate, so it also has to cover the cost of running the staking program.

How the staking works

What sets the two funds apart is staking. On the Ethereum and Solana networks, holders can lock up coins to help verify transactions and earn rewards in return, a bit like interest. Each fund would stake a portion of its holdings through three outside providers named in the filings as Figment, Galaxy Blockchain Infrastructure and Coinbase Canada, and the rewards would flow back into the fund to lift its value. The coins themselves would sit with established custodians, including Bank of New York Mellon and Coinbase. Staking adds a return that a plain price-tracking fund cannot offer, yet it also ties up coins for a time and carries risks that the filings spell out at length.

What to watch

1. Whether and when the SEC clears the funds. The filings are preliminary, so the registrations must be declared effective before either ETF can trade, and that timing rests with regulators.

2. Whether rivals match the price. A 0.14% fee resets the floor for Ethereum and Solana funds, and competing sponsors may respond with cuts of their own or with richer staking terms.

3. Whether the staking return shows up. Rewards depend on network conditions and activation queues, so the first reports after any launch will reveal how much extra yield staking really adds.