Crypto finance is only now beginning to provide an environment that matches traditional finance: ways to earn steadier, more predictable returns — similar to bonds or savings products, according to Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov and Ethena CEO Guy Young.

“Most fixed income is like the distribution of risk in different formats … basically just slicing and dicing and distributing risk,” Young said during a panel at Digital Asset Summit (DAS) in New York. “This piece of DeFi was probably the least featured two years ago.”

Until recently, crypto users mostly traded tokens or borrowed against them, often chasing high, unpredictable yields. New tools make it possible to lock in returns, even in a market known for big swings.

“What you’re doing with Pendle is providing a fixed-to-floating rate swap,” Young said, referring to a system that lets users choose between more stable or more variable returns — similar to choosing between fixed or adjustable interest rates.

That’s not easy in crypto. “It’s very difficult to know three months out what the market is actually going to look like,” he said.

Kulechov said Aave has helped support this shift by providing deep pools of capital that other projects can tap into. “Aave is sort of acting as a liquidity sink,” he said, helping “bootstrap a lot of the new coming products in DeFi.”

For now, much of the money being made still depends on trading rather than traditional lending. “A lot of DeFi yield … is largely still based on … leverage,” Kulechov said.

Over time, that could change as more real-world assets move onchain, a process known as tokenization.

“A lot of the yields and a lot of the economics will come from the traditional finance,” he said.

Read more: Ethena-backed suiUSDe stablecoin goes live on Sui with $10 million yield vault launch

Crypto has gone mainstream as a financial asset class and TradFi institutions now feel obligated to dip their toes into the space, if only to show their existing clients that they aren’t afraid to handle innovative technologies.

The problem, for some of them, is that staking — one of crypto’s most basic primitives — is still considered too dangerous. It exposes institutions to risks they are structurally unwilling to accept, like slashing, downtime, operational failures and returns that resist forecasting. As a result, many firms have limited themselves to holding spot ETH or spot SOL or avoided the assets entirely.

That dynamic is now changing. A new generation of insurance-backed staking products, structured around the Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR) benchmark and underwritten by regulated insurers, is reframing staked ETH as something closer to an institutional yield product than a speculative crypto experiment.

For cautious TradFi firms, this shift matters far more than marginal improvements in headline yield. It opens up a fundamental crypto vertical to a new set of investors.

The institutional appeal of staked ETH

Holding spot ETH offers pure exposure to price appreciation and drawdowns. But staked ETH introduces a recurring yield component that improves total return over time and partially offsets volatility. For institutions accustomed to thinking in risk-adjusted terms, this reframes ETH exposure closer to dividend-paying equities rather than growth assets.

Liquid staking tokens further strengthen the case, because they allow institutions to earn staking rewards while retaining balance-sheet flexibility. Positions can be rebalanced, used as collateral, or exited — without interrupting yield generation.

Just as importantly, staked ETH derivatives are increasingly accepted as transparent, over-collateralized instruments. For TradFi firms designing secured lending products, yield-enhanced notes, or delta-neutral strategies, staked ETH becomes usable in structure, not just in theory.

Yet despite these advantages, one obstacle has remained stubborn: risk.

How CESR and insurance change the equation

The CESR is a daily, standardized benchmark rate developed by CoinDesk Indices and CoinFund to measure the average annualized yield of ETH validator staking. It serves as a trusted reference rate for institutional staking and derivatives.

Thanks to this benchmark, a new method to earn a safe, long-term yield on ETH is emerging. Insurance companies like Chainproof (in partnership with IMA Financial Group) offer policies that essentially top up investors’ yield if their validator’s returns fall below the CESR benchmark and guarantee reimbursements if slashing occurs.

Benchmarking staking returns to the CESR — and wrapping that exposure with insurance — fundamentally alters how institutions perceive staking. Instead of open-ended technical risk, institutions get a defined, underwritten exposure. Downtime and operational failures are no longer existential threats to expected returns.

With insurance in place, CESR-linked staking begins to resemble instruments that TradFi already understands. The parallels are familiar: insured municipal bonds, enhanced money-market products, or short-duration credit with external credit support. These are not risk-free instruments, but they are priceable. Suddenly, staked ETH can be slotted into existing risk frameworks.

And once staking risk is benchmarked and insured, institutions can responsibly structure CESR-linked products. Capital-protected notes with staking yield, yield-plus strategies combining staking returns with basis trades, or delta-neutral ETH strategies with insured yield floors all become viable. Without insurance, compliance teams block these ideas.

TradFi firms cannot rely on informal assurances when dealing with regulators, LPs, or internal model validation teams. The CESR insurance model allows them to say: “Our exposure to ETH is benchmarked, insured, and underwritten by a regulated third party.” That single sentence materially changes how staking exposure is evaluated across compliance and fiduciary review processes.

Introducing ETH to the broader economy

With appropriate risk mitigation, CESR-linked staking begins to resemble infrastructure yield rather than speculative crypto return. That shift, more than yield itself, is why cautious TradFi firms are finally paying attention.

Ethereum’s long-term value proposition has always rested on its role as a global settlement infrastructure. Staking is the mechanism by which that infrastructure is secured and value accrues to participants. Insurance-backed staking does not change Ethereum’s economics; it translates them into a language institutions can understand.

Cautious TradFi firms are doing what they have always done: adopting new assets once risks are legible, bounded and transferable. They are not suddenly becoming crypto-native. CESR-linked, insured staking meets their needs, and that’s why they’re now quietly embracing staking, even though they once dismissed it.

Ether’s (ETH) 9% rally on Monday stalled at $2,200 due to stiff overhead resistance and weak ETF demand. Still, technical and onchain setups suggested that upward momentum may increase as long as ETH stays above the $2,000 mark.

Key takeaways:

• Ether bulls must flip the $2,200 level into new support.

• Spot ETF outflows continue, reflecting increasing institutional sell pressure.

Ether price must hold $2,200 as support

Data from TradingView shows that ETH price is stuck between two key trend lines: the 50-day exponential moving average (EMA) at $2,200 acting as resistance and the 50-day SMA at $2,000 as support.

Related: Ethereum may see 25% rally as richest ETH whales return to ‘profitable state’

ETH bulls must now reclaim the 50-day EMA to ensure a sustained recovery toward $3,000.

The last time ETH/USD broke out of such a range was in May 2025, triggering a 50% rally in less than seven days.

A break above $2,200 would confirm a bullish breakout from a symmetrical triangle pattern, with a measured target of $3,080, or a 42% rise from the current level.

Before this, however, the bulls would have to contend with stiff resistance between $2,780 and $2,880, where the 200-day EMA, the 50-week EMA, and the 100-week EMA converge.

Glassnode’s cost basis distribution heatmap shows a heavy accumulation at $2,750-$2,850, where investors acquired more than 7.5 million ETH.

Notably, there is a relatively low concentration of supply between $2,200 and the $2,700 cost-basis cluster, meaning a break above the current range may allow the price to move more freely toward the bigger overhead resistance.

On the downside, a dense accumulation cluster sits around $1,850, where investors previously acquired 1.3 million ETH. 

If the $1,850-$2,000 support gives in, it could trigger the next leg lower toward the bearish target of the triangle at $1,400.

“$ETH failed to reclaim the $2,100 level and is now moving down,” analyst Ted Pillows said in a Monday post on X, adding:

“Now, the only crucial support level for Ethereum is $2,000 and if ETH loses it, the dump will accelerate to new lows.”

As Cointelegraph reported, holding above $2,000 would keep the medium-term trend intact, while a break below shifts the positioning toward aggressive short exposure, with the lower targets in focus.

Ethereum ETF inflows must return

One factor that could trigger an ETH price breakout is a resurgence in institutional demand, which has diminished with outflows from spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) over the last four days.

Data from Glassnode shows the 30-day average of the US spot ETH ETF flows drifting back into the negative zone after a short period of inflows.

If flows can re-accelerate into consistent positive territory, it would strengthen the case for renewed trend continuation for ETH.

Similarly, investors reduced exposure to global Ethereum investment products, which recorded over $27.5 million in net outflows during the week ending March 20.

Meanwhile, the number of Ethereum treasury companies buying ETH on a daily basis has dropped sharply since August 2025, reinforcing the decline in institutional demand.

Tom Lee’s Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the largest corporate Ethereum treasury holder, is the only company that appears to be buying, adding $139 million worth of ETH last week.

Bitmine’s total ETH holdings are now 4.66 million ETH, bringing it closer to its goal of acquiring 5% of the token’s circulating supply.

⚡️ LATEST: Bitmine ($BMNR) now holds 4.66 million $ETH and $11 billion in total crypto and cash assets. pic.twitter.com/mijC9tANBN

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) March 23, 2026