Best in the pool on unbonding disclosure (9/10; next 7/10)
Cost
Not priced· Only 1 of 7 publish a comparable price
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links earn us a commission, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking 2026.08 · 4 criteria · 7 products · same inputs, same order
Personal comparison
Staking ranked comparison
Only 1 of 7 providers publish a comparable price; ranking still uses verified product evidence.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
1 more assessed and ranked below — none of them hidden for commercial reasons.
Ranking blindCommercial terms excludedDated primary sourcesCrypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 34/22/24/20, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20, evidence depth 18, ease of use 10, institutional trust 8. Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.09.15
published 2026-09-16
Providers tracked
980+
across 119 categories
Last verified
2026-08-17
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide
Criteria evaluated before recommending a staking recommendation
The staking path ranks on staking posture, utility after staking, and control preferences before producing a ranked result.
01
Primary goalSimpler staking, liquid staking, or native-control posture
02
Usage pathHold-and-earn, DeFi use, or Ethereum-native ethos
03
Priority signalUtility, simplicity, or control posture
04
Confidence driverFamiliar path, trusted utility-led path, or crypto-native posture
What matters most before choosing in this category
The best staking path depends on your custody posture, whether your funds stay usable after staking (post-staking utility), and how much control versus convenience you want. The right starting point is usually the one whose custody and control tradeoffs are obvious enough to understand before you stake.
If a validator you delegated to is slashed, who makes you whole — and where is that written?
Can you get a rate for your networks without booking a call?
Under your custodian, who actually presses the button on a governance vote?
Leads on written indemnity
Expert review and scoring weights
KI
KilnData checked Aug 2026
The white-label validator operator running under other firms' staking buttons, with 15 named custody-platform integration guides and a per-network lock-up figure published across 23 protocol docs pages — but a slashing base layer whose size it has never quantified, a commission printed for only two of those 23 networks, and a governance posture stated for two niche products while the Cosmos-family chains where delegated stake actually votes are left silent.
The white-label validator operator running under other firms' staking buttons, with 15 named custody-platform integration guides and a per-network lock-up figure published across 23 protocol docs pages — but a slashing base layer whose size it has never quantified, a commission printed for only two of those 23 networks, and a governance posture stated for two niche products while the Cosmos-family chains where delegated stake actually votes are left silent. Strongest on how long are the assets locked per network, and did they tell you before you signed? (9/10): RAISED 8 -> 9. The draft verified ten networks; I fetched the full validator docs catalogue enumerated from https://docs.kiln.fi/v1/llms.txt (23 protocol pages) and found the disclosure is far broader and more systematic than the draft credited. Weakest on can you find the rate you would actually pay without booking a sales call? (6/10): Held at 6, and I strengthened the basis rather than assuming it: I fetched ALL 23 validator protocol docs pages and programmatically searched every occurrence of 'commission' for an adjacent numeric percentage. Exactly two pages pair the word with a figure — Solana and NEAR. The other 21 print no rate. Published price: Name | Commission | MEV commission | Address — Kiln1 | 5% | 100% (offchain rebates & compounding) | DdCNGDpP7qMgoAy6paFzhhak2EeyCZcgjH7ak5u5v28m — Kiln2 | 7% | 7% | HCvnhbT3Sn5RsueDisWzzn5FkW8tAqoQK1dr7cvAVzin.
Best forUnbonding disclosure — 9/10
Main tradeoffRead all THREE parts of the September 2025 breach disclosure before you sign — the draft under review cited only one — and then ask for the base slashing coverage limit in writing. Kiln itself names the victim. (1) https://www.kiln.fi/post/sol-incident-swissborg---announcement, September 8, 2025: "SwissBorg and Kiln are investigating an incident that may have involved unauthorized access to a wallet used for staking operations... The incident resulted in Solana funds being improperly removed from the wallet used for staking operations." (2) https://www.kiln.fi/kiln-responds-tot-infrastructure-issue-with-validator-exit-funds-remain-protected, "PARIS, FRANCE — September 9, 2025": "Kiln today began the orderly exit of all of its Ethereum (ETH) validators", and "The exit process is expected to take between 10 and 30 days depending on the validator" — an operator-side security event that put every ETH client's principal into a multi-week forced exit, which no unbonding table warns you about. (3) The post-mortem at https://www.kiln.fi/post/re-enablement-of-kiln-services-and-security-incident-information, October 7, 2025: a threat actor compromised "a GitHub access token belonging to a Kiln infrastructure engineer", harvested cloud credentials via CI workflows, and "modified the Kiln Connect API backend controller to return a malicious transaction, which one Kiln enterprise customer signed in their custody solution, causing a loss of funds." The malicious transaction "changed the withdrawal authority of the Solana stakes, only if the existing withdrawal authority of the stake account provided in the POST call held stake balances above 150k SOL" — targeted at the largest clients, and the customer's own quorum approved it inside their custody instance. NOTE THE DIVERGENT ATTRIBUTION, which is the single most useful thing here: Kiln places the mitigation duty on the client — "Kiln has consistently recommended that customers decode transactions to verify their integrity before signing", and "Signing and broadcasting a transaction without decoding may result in a loss of authority over stake accounts, as occurred in this case" — while SwissBorg's own primary statement (https://swissborg.com/blog/swissborg-security-update-kiln-breach) puts it on Kiln: "the tampering of the transaction happened within Kiln's infrastructure", and states "no breach occurred within SwissBorg's infrastructure", quantifying the loss at "over 192,000 SOL". The lesson for this category is precise: non-custody protected the keys but not the client, because the attack came through the transaction the operator constructed, and it was not a slashing event — so the Chainproof base layer, whose size Kiln has never published, would not obviously have answered it. Ask for the base coverage limit, what perils it covers beyond slashing, and whether the operator or the client bears an API-origin malicious-transaction loss. Get it in the contract; Kiln's own institutional docs tell you to, saying "For more details and Kiln's coverage please read our T&Cs or the Order Form you have signed with Kiln."
Verify before signupName | Commission | MEV commission | Address — Kiln1 | 5% | 100% (offchain rebates & compounding) | DdCNGDpP7qMgoAy6paFzhhak2EeyCZcgjH7ak5u5v28m — Kiln2 | 7% | 7% | HCvnhbT3Sn5RsueDisWzzn5FkW8tAqoQK1dr7cvAVzin. The same page adds: "Each validator commission rate is public and the same for all funds on a given validator. The validator takes its commission automatically when rewards are generated. Your staking rewards are distributed net of the validator commission."
Popular comparisons
Research the shortlist
Starter guides
How to stake crypto and earn yieldStaking yield is real, but the right setup depends on custody posture, lock-up tolerance, and how much validator complexity you want to manage.
Starter guides
How to lend or borrow cryptoCrypto lending and borrowing can generate yield or unlock liquidity, but the real decision is about counterparty risk, collateral ratios, and liquidation mechanics.
Methodology
How this category is reviewed
Reviewed on if a validator you delegated to gets slashed, who actually writes the cheque?, how long are the assets locked per network, and did they tell you before you signed?, can you find the rate you would actually pay without booking a sales call?, and do you keep custody and still get to vote — and who presses the button?.
The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
Frequently asked
Questions people ask before choosing staking
Can I find out what this costs before talking to sales?
Not from anyone in this pool. Zero of the seven publish the price an institution would actually pay — every operator routes the rate to a commercial conversation. Where numbers do exist they cover a fraction of what is offered: one operator’s pricing page returns 404 while only two of its twenty-three documented networks carry a rate anywhere. Treat any published percentage as an anchor for the negotiation rather than the price, and ask for the rate on YOUR networks specifically.
Is the slashing protection real?
All seven advertise it. Only three name an insurer at all, and none publishes terms a buyer could read before signing. Where the cover is described it is narrower than the marketing implies — one is an opt-in purchase covering Ethereum only and double-signing only, which excludes the downtime penalties that are far more common. The question to ask is not whether they have coverage but what it excludes, what the limit is, and whether you can see the policy.
Why do the numbers on an operator’s own site disagree?
Because nobody reconciles them, and it is universal here: seven of seven contradict themselves on their own domain, on the exact figures an allocator underwrites. One prints two different Ethereum service fees in near-identical wording — 10% of total rewards in one place, 30% of execution-layer rewards in another. Another’s marketing page and its documentation disagree on how long unstaking takes. Get the number you are relying on restated in the agreement.
How long is my capital actually locked?
The unbonding period belongs to the network, but what the operator adds to it — and whether they tell you — belongs to the operator. Six of seven publish no review date on any per-network lock-up figure, and one states explicitly that it "undertakes no obligation to update the information". On the one network where the figure genuinely moves, disclosure is thinnest. Ask for the current number in writing rather than reading it off a page with no date.
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
//Analytics consent·GDPR · ePrivacy · TTDSG
ChainChoice measures page views and conversions with two cookieless, EU-hosted services: Plausible and Cloudflare Web Analytics. Nothing loads until you accept, and rankings are identical either way.ChainChoice measures how the engine is used — page views, conversions, referrer — through two cookieless, EU-hosted services: Plausible and Cloudflare Web Analytics. No advertising cookies, no cross-site profile, no data resale. Neither script loads until you accept, and rankings are identical whether you accept or decline.
