BNY Taps Figment to Add Staking to Digital Asset Custody
BNY will use Figment's validator infrastructure to let eligible institutions stake assets held in its Digital Asset Custody service and earn rewards without moving them. It is the bank's second staking partnership of 2026, after an August deal with Galaxy Digital.
Institutions that keep crypto with BNY will soon be able to stake it without the assets ever leaving the bank's custody. The bank will use Figment's validator infrastructure to power staking inside its existing Digital Asset Custody service, Figment announced on Thursday.
Under the arrangement, eligible clients that already hold digital assets with BNY can stake supported tokens through the custody platform and earn rewards without transferring them to an outside provider. BNY keeps the assets in custody, while Figment runs the validator side. Figment said the target clients include asset managers, exchange-traded fund issuers, corporates and wealth management firms.
A brief note on the mechanics. Staking is how proof-of-stake networks secure themselves: holders lock up tokens to help validate transactions, and the network pays rewards in return. Validators are the operators that do that work on the holders' behalf. For a regulated custodian, the appeal of this design is that the assets never leave the custody environment, so the client's safekeeping relationship stays intact while rewards become available on top of it.
Scale is what makes the announcement notable. BNY had approximately $62.6 trillion in assets under custody as of June 30, 2026. Figment describes itself as a leading non-custodial staking provider, with more than $18 billion in staked assets, over 1,500 institutional clients and 30 protocols. One side brings the client base, the other the operational staking track record.
This is not BNY's first move on staking this year. In August 2026, the bank reached an agreement with Galaxy Digital that also focused on enhancing staking capabilities on the same platform. Having two providers matters for a practical reason: validator downtime or penalties can eat into rewards, so spreading validator work across Galaxy Digital and Figment offers a hedge against that risk.
What it signals
The deal fits into a broader build-out at the bank. BNY's digital asset expansion already includes tokenized deposits and EU-regulated custody under MiCA, the bloc's crypto-asset framework, which we covered when BNY Mellon opened regulated crypto custody to EU institutions. The bank has also widened its work with crypto-native firms, as in its expanded partnership with Ripple covering XRP and RLUSD custody.
Two staking partnerships in a single year suggest something closer to a product line than an experiment. For the clients Figment named, ETF issuers and asset managers among them, the distinction that matters is the one this deal is built around: staking rewards on assets that stay with the custodian they already use.
