Enter crypto staking yields, or more specifically, “post-Shapella” staking yields. Since the Shapella upgrade of the Ethereum network, users can stake and unstake their ether (ETH) at will, significantly de-risking staked ETH from a liquidity standpoint. This has been reflected in the staked ether, or stETH, discount to ETH, barely dipping past 30 bps since Ethereum’s last major upgrade. Before the Shapella upgrade, stETH was a poor collateral asset due to its illiquidity and discount volatility. Now that stETH has been derisked, we have seen it overtake ETH as the primary collateral asset throughout DeFi.
