Overview
- BNY Mellon and Galaxy announced on Aug. 4 that Galaxy will provide validator infrastructure and serve as a design partner for a planned staking service on BNY’s Digital Asset Custody platform.
- The service would let eligible institutional clients earn staking rewards without moving tokens out of BNY custody by combining custody with onchain staking operations.
- The offering is not live and remains subject to regulatory review, with the firms withholding key details such as which tokens will qualify, fees, withdrawal rules, slashing liability and a launch date.
- Staking can create variable protocol rewards but also carries risks like validator downtime, slashing penalties and locked or delayed withdrawals, so BNY says it will link staking to its fund accounting, tax reporting and client reporting systems.
- The move deepens BNY’s push beyond safekeeping into tokenization and blockchain services and pairs the bank’s scale with Galaxy’s existing validator footprint, positioning them to compete with crypto-native custodians and staking ETPs.