Onchain Treasury Managers must ask themselves: How do you preserve capital while enabling sustainable growth?
For most protocols, institutions, and onchain companies, a treasury’s main objective isn’t to chase rewards, it’s to ensure the organization can operate with sufficient runway while funding the ecosystem’s strategic priorities. That means actively safeguarding purchasing power, minimizing risk, and extending capital efficiency.
In this article, we explore how staking fits into treasury management and key considerations for implementing it effectively.
Treasury Strategy: The Core Building Blocks
Most well-managed treasuries allocate capital across:
- Stablecoins
- Growth assets (e.g., BTC, ETH, SOL)
- Native tokens (if applicable)
It becomes important to balance holding and deploying capital (e.g., investing in growth initiatives, DeFi strategies, etc.,). While diversification is critical, one of the most underutilized levers in crypto treasury management is staking.
Why Staking Belongs in Every Treasury Strategy
If your treasury holds stakable assets but isn’t staking them, you’re losing value to emissions and inflation.
Staking is consistent and low risk:
- Consistent rewards: Earn rewards simply by securing the network.
- Low risk: No exposure to counterparty risk compared to lending or DeFi strategies.
- Capital efficiency: Offsets inflation and enhances runway.
Interested in understanding potential staking rewards in further detail? Use our staking rewards calculator for ETH, SOL, and DOT rewards projections.
Native Staking vs. Liquid Staking
Most treasuries prefer liquid staking for flexibility, but native staking deserves consideration for its higher rewards and reduced smart contract risks.
Enter: Figment Treasury Staking
Figment aims to help grow Crypto Treasuries through a bespoke offering for stakable assets. The key benefits of Native Staking include:
- Increased staking rewards due to having a higher SRR and ability to customize fees
- Less Risk as Native Staking presents less smart contract risk and lower probability of loss of funds
- Ecosystem Alignment by allowing ecosystems who have benefited the shared economic security and decentralization to play a more active role in promoting decentralization and securing the network.
However, there are potential downsides, including the loss of high liquidity as staking and unstaking presents unbonding and exit queues, which can vary in length, commonly days.
Thus, we advocate for asset and strategy diversification, balancing native staking with liquid staking strategies. Staking should be augmented with additional strategies such as holding stablecoins, deploying native tokens into ecosystem growth, and deploying capital into DeFi.
Who is Figment’s Treasury Staking for:
Figment is known to work with the best and biggest institutions looking to stake. With our Treasury Staking offering we’re committed to bringing our proven risk adjusted staking rewards to the leading protocols, including:
- DeFi Protocols looking to boost rewards and drive growth:
- Imagine a DeFi protocol deploying capital into staking strategies while using their own platform. Assuming there is a positive delta between the borrow and staking rewards rate, a protocol can boost their staking rewards by deploying looping staking vault strategies with Figment. This is all the while keeping Total Value Locked (TVL) on their protocol
- Protocols with Stakable Native Tokens (e.g., L1s) looking to fund strategic initiatives:
- Protocols can fund growth and strategic aims by staking their native tokens and using emissions to fund growth and other strategic initiatives, such as governance participation. This mitigates sell pressure and creates a sustainable way to offset expenses and by further promoting the decentralization of the network
- Public Goods seeking to fund open source software and ecosystem growth:
- Public good protocols can deploy stakable assets to fund the things that matter and ecosystem growth, such as building on their platform. This is a great way to keep principle and use staking rewards to fund growth.
- Any protocol holding stakeable but over indexed in liquid staking or simply not staking
- Figment’s Treasury Staking is ideal for any protocol looking to earn staking rewards on their assets. Native staking is a compliment to various other strategies and can help boost low risk treasury growth.
Closing Thoughts: Staking = Capital Preservation + Alignment
When it comes to crypto treasury management, staking is the lowest-risk path to earning real rewards on your growth assets. It helps:
- Capital preservation by offsetting inflation.
- Network support for long-term ecosystem sustainability.
- Risk-aware, value-aligned growth.
For most treasuries, native staking should be the foundation. By leveraging staking, treasuries can create a more sustainable and resilient strategy that balances risk and reward. Integrating staking into treasury management can significantly enhance capital efficiency. In an evolving market, staying ahead means optimizing every tool at your disposal, and staking is one of the most effective ways to do so. Want help designing a staking strategy for your treasury?
Interested in Figment Treasury Staking? Reach out to learn how we help grow your ecosystem and support staking at scale.
