Morgan Stanley began trading two spot crypto funds on NYSE Arca on Tuesday afternoon: the Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust (MSSE) and the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust (MSOL). Both charge a 0.14% sponsor fee. The more consequential detail sits underneath that number, because neither fund simply parks coins in cold storage. Both stake what they hold, and 95% of the resulting network rewards accrue to the trust rather than to the bank or its service providers.

  • Tickers and venue: MSSE (ether) and MSOL (solana), both listed on NYSE Arca.
  • Fee: 0.14% annual sponsor fee on each, the lowest published rate in the US crypto ETP field.
  • Staked share: the ether trust intends to stake 50% to 80% of its ETH under normal conditions; the solana trust can stake up to 100% of its SOL.
  • Reward split: staking providers and custodians take up to 5% of rewards, with 95% going to the trust.

What is actually inside MSSE and MSOL?

Each trust holds the underlying asset directly and prices it against a CoinDesk benchmark struck at the 4PM New York settlement, the Ether Benchmark for MSSE and the Solana Benchmark for MSOL. Coinbase handles custody. The staking work is farmed out to three named operators: Figment, Galaxy Blockchain Infrastructure, and Coinbase Canada.

RelatedMorgan Stanley's 0.14% ETF Fee Ignites a Crypto Price War

That operator list is not decoration. A staking ETP has to solve a problem a bitcoin fund never faces, which is that staked assets are not instantly available. Ether unstaking runs through an exit queue that lengthens when validators leave in size, and solana funds unbond on an epoch boundary. Capping the ether trust at 80% staked leaves a liquid sleeve for redemptions and expenses. Solana's faster unbonding is why MSOL is allowed to go all the way to 100%.

How staking rewards flow through MSSE and MSOL The trusts stake 50 to 80 percent of ether and up to 100 percent of solana through Figment, Galaxy and Coinbase Canada. Of the rewards produced, 95 percent returns to the trust and shareholders and 5 percent is retained by staking providers and custodians. WHERE THE STAKING YIELD GOES Trust holdings MSSE: 50-80% staked MSOL: up to 100% Validators Figment, Galaxy, Coinbase Canada Network rewards paid in ETH or SOL, then split THE SPLIT 95% to the trust and its shareholders 5% Providers and custodians keep up to 5%. The 0.14% sponsor fee is charged separately. Bitcoin funds have no equivalent line: proof of work pays no staking yield. genztech.blog
Fig 1 · mechanism Staking rewards are produced by third-party validators, then split. Shareholders receive 95%, on top of spot price exposure, and pay the 0.14% sponsor fee separately.

Why does a 95% pass-through matter more than the fee?

Fee competition in crypto ETPs has been running for months and there is not much room left below 0.14%. Staking is where the real spread now lives. A fund that stakes and keeps most of the yield for itself can advertise a low headline fee while quietly earning far more than that fee from the network. Setting the retained share at 5% closes that door before it opens.

Run the arithmetic with ordinary staking rates and the point becomes obvious. On a solana position staked at close to 100%, network rewards are worth multiples of a 14 basis point fee. Handing 95% of that back turns the sponsor fee into the actual cost of ownership rather than a marketing number, and it makes the product harder to undercut, since a rival would have to pay shareholders more than 95% of a yield it does not control.

How does this compare with the bank's bitcoin fund?

Morgan Stanley already runs the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, which gathered $381 million in assets under management through July 16 and tracks the CoinDesk Bitcoin Benchmark Rate. That fund cannot stake anything, because proof of work produces no staking yield for holders. MSSE and MSOL are the first products in the bank's crypto lineup where the asset itself generates income, which changes how they can be sold: not as a directional bet, but as a position with a cash-flow story attached.

Scale is the open question. SoSoValue counts eight US spot solana ETFs holding $889.3 million in combined net assets, so MSOL is entering a category that is real but small next to bitcoin funds.

Size of the pools MSSE and MSOL are entering The Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust held 381 million dollars through July 16. All eight US spot solana exchange traded funds held 889.3 million dollars combined. ASSETS UNDER MANAGEMENT, $ MILLIONS MSBT, the bank's bitcoin trust (through Jul 16) $381M All 8 US spot solana ETFs, combined $889M One fund on the left, an entire category on the right. Morgan Stanley's distribution is the variable that decides whether MSOL stays a small share of that pool or reshapes it. genztech.blog
Fig 2 · scale The solana ETF category is small enough that a single large distributor can move it. MSBT figure is assets under management through July 16; solana figure is the combined net assets of eight listed US funds per SoSoValue.

MSSE and MSOL side by side

MSSE (ether)MSOL (solana)
ExchangeNYSE ArcaNYSE Arca
Sponsor fee0.14%0.14%
Target staked share50% to 80%up to 100%
Rewards to the trust95%95%
Pricing benchmarkCoinDesk Ether Benchmark, 4PM NYCoinDesk Solana Benchmark, 4PM NY
Staking operatorsFigment, Galaxy, Coinbase CanadaFigment, Galaxy, Coinbase Canada

How did the launch get here?

  1. Jul 1, 2026Amended filings set the sponsor fee at 0.14% the lowest crypto ETP fee published at the time
  2. Jul 14, 2026Amended S-1 registration statements filed with the SEC naming Coinbase for custody and three staking operators
  3. Jul 16, 2026E*TRADE turns on spot bitcoin, ether and solana trading retail rails inside the same parent company
  4. Jul 28, 2026MSSE and MSOL begin trading on NYSE Arca both staking from day one

What it means for the market

The exposed names here are the service providers rather than the issuer. Coinbase sits in both the custody and staking chains, which adds fee income tied to fund assets rather than to retail trading volume, and that is the revenue line the market has wanted to see grow. Galaxy Digital and the private operator Figment pick up institutional staking mandates with a household-name client attached. For Morgan Stanley itself, two funds are rounding error against a wealth business overseeing roughly $9 trillion for clients through about 16,000 advisers.

RelatedSolana Launches Stake-Weighted On-Chain Governance

That distribution is the real signal for investors to watch. A crypto ETP that launches with access to an adviser network of that size does not need to win a marketing war for flows, it needs its advisers cleared to recommend it. Watch first-month net creations in MSSE and MSOL against the $889 million already sitting in solana funds, and watch whether rival issuers respond by raising their own reward pass-through instead of cutting fees they can no longer cut. None of this is investment advice.

Our take

The fee was the story a month ago. It is not the story now. Once the cheapest fund in a category is also the one paying out 95% of a yield the asset generates on its own, the competitive question shifts from what an issuer charges to what an issuer keeps, and that is a much harder number to hide inside a prospectus. Expect the pass-through percentage to become the figure every staking ETP has to publish next to its fee.

The risk worth naming is operational, not commercial. Staking 100% of a solana position leaves the trust dependent on epoch-boundary unbonding to meet redemptions in a fast market, and slashing risk, however remote on well-run validators, now sits inside a product sold through a mainstream wealth channel. Nothing about that is disqualifying. It is simply the first time this particular set of tradeoffs has been packaged for advisers rather than for crypto natives.

What to watch · next 90 days
  • Effective yield disclosure. The number that matters to a shareholder is realized reward yield net of the 5% retention and the 0.14% fee, not the headline staking rate.
  • Pass-through matching. Whether competing ether and solana funds publish their own reward splits, or stay quiet about them.
  • Redemption behavior. The first sharp drawdown will test how a fund staked near 100% handles same-day outflows.
  • Adviser access. Whether the products get cleared onto Morgan Stanley's own advisory platforms, which decides whether the $9 trillion distribution figure means anything here.
Primary sources

Original analysis by GenZTech. Launch details reported by CoinDesk.