Web3 with Sam Kamani
356: Leverage, Liquidity & The Future of ETH Staking with Guest Speaker Steven Pack from RockSolid
12 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is Rock Solid and how has it grown in the ETH staking space?
Hello, innovators, entrepreneurs and risk takers.
Chapter 2: What are real yields in ETH staking and how have they changed?
Welcome to another episode of Web3 with Sam Kumani podcast. And today on this podcast episode, I'm interviewing Steve from Rock Solid, where he is going to share about how their company is doing.
Chapter 3: How do delta-neutral strategies help in surviving market shocks?
which is exceptionally well especially considering the market conditions and what they are building and where things are moving in the space we also talk about market outlook what's happening what's happening in this whole ethereum space in the space of staking restating liquid staking strategies vaults
and where he sees the future going so if you work in finance even if you work in traditional finance then this episode is for you as always nothing that we talk about here should be taken as investment advice and please like share subscribe and follow with all that out of the way let's get into it so steve welcome to the show looking forward to interviewing you as always
I really enjoy our catch-ups and talking about the industry and everything that's going. We last met during Token 2049 Singapore and would love to learn what's new at RockSolid.
Chapter 4: What is leverage staking and how does it work?
What have you guys been up to? And yes, and lots of questions, but let's start with that. What's new at RockSolid?
Chapter 5: Why is active management preferred over DIY looping in staking?
Yeah, I remember it was a hot and humid day, sand by the pool. It was very late September or maybe early October and we just launched. So it was high excitement from our point of view, but like unknown kind of future, right? Like were, you know, was, was the Rocketpool community going to embrace us?
Chapter 6: What upcoming products are being launched in the liquidity staking space?
Were we going to see our ETH deposits and were they going to be little ones? Were they going to be big ones? So yeah, that was an exciting time. So fast forward now, just over three months and things are going amazing, honestly. We've had a lot of growth and one thing we're proud of is organic growth, right?
Like we did run some incentives for the first, I think, six weeks just to give people an extra reason, but we haven't done the traditional route of incentivizing mercenary capital. As you know, there's plenty of ETH out there that if you pay for, it will come for a short time and then leave. We haven't done that. We've really been able to attract organic traction.
I should have had the number in front of me, but I think we're somewhere over 300 individual depositors right now, over 9,000 ETH in ETH terms. When I last looked at it, that was around 25 million USD. Obviously, ETH's having a bit of a... bit of a day, but like, you know, even ETH back sort of at its, say, all-time highs, like where, you know, it's closer to sort of 40, 45.
So, you know, getting to that in, you know, with our first vol in the first three months, super exciting, like from a business point of view. But I think the thing that's maybe coolest is these are folks from a community that we loved like Aries Holders and they were supporting a project they cared about. They were supporting Ethereum and they were earning their 2.5% doing it.
Chapter 7: How are vaults revolutionizing on-chain finance?
But that was kind of it. They kind of didn't have that many options unless they wanted to try run their own little mini Aries hedge fund. And that's out of reach for most people. And so... For those depositors, we've been earning great returns since inception.
Chapter 8: What is the market outlook for ETH staking and asset management in the near future?
They're higher at the start. They were closer to sort of 8%, 9% at the start, and they've now settled around 6%. There's just a bit less ETH yield sort of available now than there was sort of when we very first started. But, you know, that's like more than two times, that's like two and a half times the staking rate. You know, we've been able to like earn real returns for our depositors.
And that's what I'm most proud of. And I think importantly, during that time, there was like the stream and elixir blow up. There was 10th of the 10th. There was whatever we're going to call 1st of February, like around the last few days. I don't know. Yes. But we've not suffered any losses during that time.
We've been really disciplined in keeping delta neutral strategies in being allocated across lots of different strategies. And so it's, yeah, it's been a super, super solid stage. I'm really happy.
That's, yeah, that's very cool. I've got so many, so many questions around, around how do you, how do you, what's your strategy for choosing strategies?
Yeah. I mean, so we do, we have a great partnership with a curator called Tulipa Capital. They're based in Europe, manage a bunch of funds. So it's a kind of sort of organic process actually with them.
They're kind of our ears and eyes and ears on chain, like looking at things like what incentive campaigns are running, like what L2s are seeking liquidity, what protocols on mainnet are seeking liquidity. And so they're doing that, we're doing that. But also we've kind of become this almost like a quasi BD arm for Rocketpool, right? Like not official, like we're not officially designated as this.
But the fact is like we control like more REs than most really like, or maybe than any, I don't know, that are looking to deploy it in this way. And so we're actually able to, you know, go to protocols and say like, hey, we've got our ETH and either secure good deals for our depositors. Unfortunately, or maybe not unfortunately, this is just natural.
Most protocols do seek ETH like, you know, or wrapped ETH, you know, more than our ETH. Like despite our ETH being, you know, Like a great asset, it's like over a billion dollars in TVL. It doesn't quite have the reach of ETH or even state to ETH. But that's one of the things we're trying to change.
Like as we grow, we get that bit more negotiating leverage to say, well, we will come, but only if it's denominated in our ETH. And, you know, just that's a, that's a process, right? Like getting more protocols, accepting our ETH and getting our ammunition even higher. But even without, you know, even with progress so far, we've been able to get our ETH integrated on a number of L2s.
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