Taurus Integrates Everstake for Institutional Crypto Staking: A New Era for Regulated Yield

A strategic partnership between Swiss-regulated Taurus and validator giant Everstake is set to redefine institutional access to crypto staking, merging enterprise-grade custody with non-custodial yield generation.

In a significant development for the institutional digital asset space, Taurus, a FINMA-regulated Swiss infrastructure provider, has announced a major integration with Everstake, a leading validator service operator. This partnership, revealed in a company announcement, directly embeds enterprise staking capabilities into Taurus’s custody platform. The move is designed to offer banks and financial institutions a seamless, regulated pathway to generate yield from proof-of-stake (PoS) assets like Solana (SOL), Near Protocol (NEAR), Cardano (ADA), and Tezos (XTZ) without compromising on custody security or operational control.

The integration represents a convergence of two critical pillars of institutional crypto adoption: compliant custody and robust staking infrastructure. By combining Taurus’s regulated custody stack with Everstake’s validator network—which supports over 80 PoS networks and reports approximately $7 billion in staked assets—the partnership addresses key concerns around security, regulatory compliance, and operational simplicity for traditional finance entities. This collaboration underscores a broader industry trend where staking, once dominated by decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, is being systematically integrated into the offerings of regulated financial infrastructure providers.

The Partnership Mechanics: Custody Meets Validator Infrastructure

At its core, the integration is engineered to separate the roles of asset custody and network validation, providing institutions with a clear and secure operational model. Taurus will continue to serve as the regulated custodian, where clients' private keys are secured within its institutional-grade custody workflows. Everstake, functioning as the independent validator operator, will provide the technical infrastructure necessary to participate in securing PoS blockchains and earning rewards.

This model allows institutional clients using the Taurus platform to delegate their PoS assets to Everstake’s validators. Crucially, the assets never leave Taurus’s custody environment. The client retains ownership and control of the private keys while delegating the staking rights. This structure is pivotal for risk-averse institutions that require stringent asset safeguarding but also seek to participate in the growing yield opportunities presented by staking. The initial supported assets include major PoS tokens like SOL, NEAR, ADA, and XTZ, with potential for expansion across Everstake’s extensive network support.

The Institutional Staking Landscape: From DeFi Niche to Mainstream Infrastructure

The Taurus-Everstake deal is not an isolated event but part of a definitive shift in how institutions access crypto-native yield. Staking, fundamentally the process of locking tokens to support network operations and security in return for rewards, has evolved from a retail and DeFi-focused activity into a core service offered by regulated custodians and banks.

This trajectory mirrors the earlier institutionalization of crypto custody and trading. Just as spot Bitcoin ETFs represent a packaged, regulated product for price exposure, integrated staking services represent a packaged, regulated product for yield exposure. The growth is being driven by demand from institutional clients seeking revenue from their digital asset holdings beyond mere appreciation, coupled with the rapid expansion of the PoS ecosystem itself, which now includes Ethereum after its transition to Proof-of-Stake.

Comparative Analysis: How Other Major Players Are Approaching Institutional Staking

Examining similar moves by other major custodians reveals a competitive race to capture the institutional staking market, albeit with varying partnership models.

• Coinbase & Figment: In October, Coinbase expanded its integration with Figment, another major institutional staking provider, to allow its custody clients to stake a wider array of PoS assets directly from their custody accounts. This model closely parallels the Taurus-Everstake approach, leveraging a specialist validator infrastructure partner.
• Anchorage Digital: The federally-chartered digital asset bank has also expanded its staking offerings. It enhanced its Hyperliquid product by adding HYPE staking powered by Figment’s infrastructure. Furthermore, in September, Anchorage added custody and staking for Starknet’s STRK token, explicitly noting the expansion of "institutional access to the asset and its yield-generating features."
• Lido Finance: Even within DeFi, the largest liquid staking protocol, Lido, made a significant institutional push. In February, it launched Lido v3, which introduced new stVaults designed to let institutional Ether (ETH) stakers customize setups for specific compliance and operational control requirements.

These developments highlight a clear consensus: institutions require tailored solutions that marry yield generation with their non-negotiable standards for security, compliance, and control. The competition is now focused on which provider can offer the most seamless integration, broadest asset support, and strongest regulatory standing.

Deep Dive: The Strategic Profiles of Taurus and Everstake

Understanding the significance of this partnership requires a look at the unique strengths each party brings to the table.

Taurus: Founded in 2018 and based in Switzerland, Taurus has established itself as a leading European provider of digital asset infrastructure for banks and institutions. Its suite of services spans custody, tokenization, trading, and issuance. Being regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) provides a significant trust signal for global financial entities. This partnership follows other strategic moves by Taurus to expand its reach; for instance, in May, it partnered with Parfin, an institutional blockchain provider, to extend its tokenization services into Latin American financial markets.

Everstake: As a pure-play staking service provider founded in 2018, Everstake brings deep technical expertise and massive scale. Supporting over 80 blockchains and managing around $7 billion in staked assets positions it as one of the largest validator operators globally. Its role is purely infrastructural—it does not take custody of assets. This makes it an ideal partner for regulated custodians like Taurus who wish to add staking functionality without altering their core custody proposition or assuming additional validator operational risks.

The Regulatory Context: Navigating Compliance in Staking Services

The integration through a regulated custodian like Taurus inherently addresses several critical regulatory concerns that have surrounded staking services. In jurisdictions like the United States, questions from regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about whether certain staking arrangements constitute unregistered securities offerings have created uncertainty.

By offering staking as an integrated feature of a regulated custody service—where the custodian remains responsible for asset safekeeping and client onboarding (including Know-Your-Customer and Anti-Money Laundering checks)—the model provides a clearer compliance framework. It distances itself from the public, permissionless DeFi staking pools that regulators have scrutinized. This pathway allows traditional financial institutions to engage with crypto yield within a familiar regulatory perimeter, significantly lowering the adoption barrier.

Conclusion: A Milestone in Maturation for Crypto Financial Services

The integration of Everstake’s staking services into Taurus’s regulated custody platform is more than just another partnership announcement. It is a milestone that reflects the maturation of crypto financial services into a layered, specialized industry. Infrastructure is becoming modular: one firm excels at secure custody (Taurus), another at high-uptime validation (Everstake), and together they create a composite service greater than the sum of its parts for the end-client.

For institutional readers and market observers, this development signals several key trends:

1. Staking is becoming table stakes for major custodians serving institutional clients.
2. Specialization is deepening, with clear divisions emerging between custody experts and staking/validation experts.
3. The regulatory path forward for institutional crypto yield increasingly runs through integrated services offered by regulated entities.

Looking ahead, stakeholders should watch for further expansions in the range of supported staking assets on platforms like Taurus’s. Additionally, observe how other regional custodians and banks respond with similar partnerships or proprietary builds. The ultimate metric of success will be the volume of traditionally managed assets that flow through these new regulated staking conduits. As proof-of-stake networks continue to grow and evolve, providing secure, compliant access to their native yield mechanisms will remain a central challenge—and opportunity—for the next wave of institutional adoption in digital assets.