StakeWise V3: Performance-Fee Model for Liquid Staking

2026-07-28

StakeWise is a non-custodial liquid staking protocol on Ethereum and Gnosis Chain. Users stake ETH or GNO and receive osETH or osGNO: yield-bearing liquid staking tokens that remain composable across DeFi. The V3 upgrade introduced a vault-based architecture where any node operator can create their own staking vault with custom fee settings, rather than everyone sharing a single pool.

Revenue comes from a performance fee deducted from staking rewards before they reach token holders. For osETH and osGNO vaults the rate is approximately 5% of staking rewards; for rETH2 vaults it sits around 10%. This fee is taken at the validator level: gross consensus-layer rewards are split between the staker (who sees the osETH redemption rate appreciate) and the protocol treasury at the configured rate.

The vault architecture is what makes this adapter interesting to build. There is no single contract to read: revenue has to be aggregated across every user-deployed vault, and new vaults are created constantly. The adapter discovers active vaults dynamically via the StakeWise registry contract, then reads ExitedAssets and ValidatorUpdated events on each vault to reconstruct per-vault staking rewards and apply the vault's specific fee percentage. Daily revenue is summed across all vaults on both Ethereum and Gnosis.

All-time fees stand at $42.3 million, with around $208,000 in the past seven days and $32,000 in the most recent 24 hours. The consistent daily revenue reflects StakeWise's position as a significant liquid staking protocol, particularly after the V3 launch which opened vault creation to institutional operators and solo stakers alike.

Website: stakewise.io · Twitter: @stakewise_io