The Ethereum Foundation has begun staking part of its inventory, investing approximately 70,000 ETH, as part of its plan to support the continued operation of the Ethereum ecosystem.
The foundation said staking starts with a 2,016 ETH deposit and uses Dirk and Vouch, the open source validator tools developed by infrastructure company Attestant.
Dirk acts as a distributed signer, allowing coordination across multiple jurisdictions and reducing single points of failure, while Vouch handles validator duties.
The decision follows the public release of the foundation’s financial policies Last year, crypto and fiat assets were managed in a way that balances long-term sustainability with Ethereum-aligned values such as decentralization, open source access, and user privacy.
Rather than letting ETH sit idle, the foundation now plans to earn staking rewards and reinvest them into funding protocol research, ecosystem development, and community grants.
According to the CoinDesk Comprehensive Ether Staking Rate (CESR), the current staking return rate of the Ethereum validator group is approximately 2.808%. Data from Arkham Intelligence shows that the Ethereum Foundation currently has 172,650 ETH available for deployment, as well as an additional 10,000 wrapped ethereum (WETH).
The foundation said the staking setup combines custody infrastructure and self-managed hardware and includes a small number of customers spread across multiple countries.