The Form RW asks the Commission to consent to pulling registration No. 333-290918, filed as an S-1 on October 16, 2025 and never declared effective. VanEck gave no reason beyond saying it does not intend to proceed with the planned distribution, and because no shares were ever issued there is nothing to redeem and nothing to unwind.
VanEck Digital Assets has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to withdraw the registration statement for a fund that would have held stETH, Lido's staked-ether token. The request is a Form RW filed on October 14 under Rule 477 of the Securities Act of 1933, covering registration No. 333-290918, and it seeks an effective withdrawal date of October 14 or the earliest practicable date after it.
The vehicle behind the filing was the Lido Staked Ethereum Trust, a Delaware statutory trust set up to track the MarketVector Lido Staked Ethereum Benchmark Rate. VanEck registered the trust in early October 2025 and filed its S-1 on October 16 that year. Rather than holding ether, the fund would have given brokerage accounts exposure to a liquid staking token, which is a claim on staked ether and the rewards it earns rather than on the asset itself.
No reason is given. The filing says only that the sponsor does not intend to proceed with the planned distribution, and it offers nothing about commercial, market or regulatory cause. It was signed by Matthew A. Babinsky, a vice president. Rule 477 withdrawals take effect on the Commission's consent, so the registration is pending withdrawal rather than already gone.
Almost nothing has to be unwound. The registration never became effective, no securities were issued or sold under it, and no preliminary prospectus was distributed. There are no shareholders to redeem and no fund assets to liquidate. This is a withdrawn application, not a fund closure.
The registration sat on file for close to a year without being declared effective. SEC staff addressed certain liquid-staking arrangements in a statement in August 2025, distinguishing activities it viewed as outside the securities laws from arrangements that depend on managerial or entrepreneurial effort. That statement was conditional, and it did not clear exchange-traded funds that hold staking tokens.
Fund sponsors have taken opposite approaches to staking inside a wrapper. Pando's newly listed Solana fund in Hong Kong, a different regime with its own rules, charges 0.60% and will not stake any of its solana, with estimated ongoing charges of 1.60% a year. A fund holding a liquid staking token does not make that choice: the staking happens upstream inside a protocol, and the wrapper inherits whatever the protocol does.
Since August, Lido has been consolidating roughly a third of Ethereum's validators into its CMv2 module, a $16.5 billion migration that moves 8 million ether onto 0x02 validators and puts locked ETH bonds behind 34 curated operators for the first time. An ETF tracking stETH would have passed that operator set, and the governance questions attached to it, through to US brokerage customers.
VanEck's position in single-asset crypto funds is crowded. Bitwise's BSOL had taken $948 million of the $1.22 billion that went into spot Solana funds as of late August, leaving VanEck and the rest of the field to divide the remainder. The Form RW gives no reason, and a crowded race is not evidence of one. The observable sequence is a registration that waited a year and a sponsor that has asked to take it off the table.
Other issuers are still filing. Winklevoss registered a Zcash trust on October 6 with a 0.25% fee and Gemini custody, naming Nasdaq as the listing venue while leaving its transfer agent and administrator blank. On the stETH fund, the Commission has not said whether it consents to the withdrawal, and until it does the registration remains on file.
