BNY lets custody clients earn staking rewards without letting go of their coins

Figment will run the validator side of the operation, while BNY keeps the assets. Eligible institutions that already park digital assets with the bank can stake supported tokens straight from the Digital Asset Custody platform and collect rewards — no external transfer required. Figment announced the arrangement Thursday, on or around November 12, 2026.

Staking is how proof-of-stake chains secure themselves: holders lock tokens to help validate transactions and get rewards back. Figment's non-custodial setup is what makes the fit work — it operates validators but never takes possession of client assets, so it slots in behind a custodian rather than competing with one.

The client list BNY is aiming at reads institutionally: asset managers, exchange-traded fund issuers, corporates and wealth management firms. Figment oversees more than $18 billion in staked assets and serves over 1,500 institutional clients across 30 protocols. BNY held roughly $62.6 trillion in assets under custody as of June 30, 2026, making it the world's largest custodian bank.

This is BNY's second staking partnership this year. In August 2026, the bank reached an agreement with Galaxy Digital to enhance staking capabilities on the very same Digital Asset Custody platform. Running two validator vendors keeps BNY off a single operator — a real consideration when downtime or penalties can eat into rewards.

The Figment deal folds into a broader digital asset buildout at BNY that includes tokenized deposits and EU-regulated custody under MiCA, the European Union's crypto rulebook. ETF issuers stand out as the group to watch: funds holding proof-of-stake assets have an obvious reason to capture staking rewards, and doing it through the custodian they already use could cut a lot of operational friction.