Kiln scores 6 points above Chorus One, led by slashing cover and lock-up disclosure. Kiln ranks #1 and Chorus One #3 of 7 published staking. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.
Kiln79
vs
Chorus One73
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #1 and #3 of 7
Kiln scores 6 points above Chorus One, led by slashing cover and lock-up disclosure.
Kiln #1 of 779
Chorus One #3 of 773
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99; a bar is empty at 41 and full at 99.
Why, term by termKiln leads on 2 of 4 published criteria; Chorus One on 2. The terms sum to the gap.
TermKilnChorus OneWeightPoints
Slashing cover6/103/108.2+6.4for Kiln+3.3 of 32
Rate transparency6/107/105.8−1.5for Chorus One−0.8 of 32
Lock-up disclosure8/105/105.3+4.1for Kiln+2.1 of 32
Voting from custody7/109/104.8−2.5for Chorus One−1.3 of 32
Net of the terms+6.5
Reproduced gap+6.5
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below7973+6.0
Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.
KilnScore 79The 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 26 protocol docs pages (2026-09-28 count) — but a slashing base layer whose size it has never quantified, a commission printed for only two of those 26 networks, and a governance posture stated for two niche products while the Cosmos-family chains where delegated stake actually votes are left silent.Strength: Unbonding disclosure — 8/10Watch-out: Read all three parts of the September 2025 breach disclosure before you sign, 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."Chorus OneScore 73Institutional validator operator now trading as Bitwise Onchain Solutions, running non-custodial delegated staking across 30+ proof-of-stake networks, with a named Ledger Enterprise custody integration and a genuinely public per-network commission feed - but a March 2026 contract that disclaims slashing loss entirely, and two different legal entities named on its own site as the staking provider.Strength: Governance under custody — 9/10Watch-out: Read the Terms of Service before the marketing, and check which entity you are actually signing with. https://chorus.one/terms-of-service, updated March 18, 2026, defines Slashing and then says in 1.3 that 'Bitwise is not responsible in any way for any failure by any supported blockchain Network to transfer Rewards (including any risks of "Slashing")', caps all liability at fees paid in the preceding six months (or $10,000 if none), and contains 'insurance', 'indemnif' and 'coverage' exactly zero times - while live product pages advertise a '$250k/quarter self-insurance pool' whose only explanatory article now 301-redirects to the homepage. If slashing indemnity is why you are shortlisting this operator, that base cover exists only in marketing copy, the institutional layer is explicitly 'upgradeable' (i.e. purchased), no insurer or reinsurer is ever named, and the signed contract allocates the loss to you. Second-order, and the sharper point: the counterparty is ambiguous on the operator's own domain. The Terms of Service name 'Chorus One AG, a Swiss company ... doing business as Bitwise Onchain Solutions', governed by Swiss law with binding arbitration and a class-action waiver - but the disclosure block on https://chorus.one/crypto-research states 'Staking is provided by Attestant Ltd. Doing business as "Bitwise Onchain Solutions" ("BOS")'. Two different legal entities trade under the same name on the same site, and nothing public tells a buyer which one will be on their contract or which law governs it. Establish the contracting entity in writing before diligence goes further.
Quick facts
At a glance
2 of 3 rows read the same for both.
FactKilnChorus One
PricingSnapshotKiln validator docs page "Solana (SOL)" (https://docs.kiln.fi/v1/kiln-products/validators/protocols/solana-sol, fetched 28 September 2026), Mainnet table with columns Name | Commission | MEV commission | Address: Kiln1 — "5%" commission, "100% (offchain rebates & compounding)" MEV commission, vote account DdCNGDpP7qMgoAy6paFzhhak2EeyCZcgjH7ak5u5v28m; Kiln2 — "7%" commission, "7%" MEV commission, vote account 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." These are Solana validator rates only. Of the 26 validator protocol pages Kiln documents, only this page and the NEAR page print a commission figure, https://www.kiln.fi/pricing returns 404, and no institutional contract rate is published.Chorus One's OPUS / ETH Staking Vault page (https://chorus.one/stake-ethereum-opus, fetched 28 September 2026) answers "What is the fee for staking on the ETH Staking Vault?" with "The ETH Staking Vault Pool offers highly competitive staking fees at just 5%." and repeats it as "Low fees, high rewards – our 5% commissions are among the market's lowest." That rate belongs to the ETH Staking Vault pool, not to an institutional contract: https://chorus.one/institutional-staking prints no percentage and routes to "Contact us". The Terms of Service (UPDATED 18 March 2026) set the base — a flat Service Fee "as a percentage of the Rewards earned" at the rate most recently posted on the Site — so the rate is charged on rewards, not principal.
Asset coverageEditorial——
Region fitSnapshotglobalglobal
From the published criteria
Which should you pick?
Kiln
79#1 of 7
Leads
Pick it when
Pick Kiln if slashing cover matters most — it scores 6/10 to Chorus One's 3/10 there (weight 34).
Strength
Unbonding disclosure — 8/10
Tradeoff
Read all three parts of the September 2025 breach disclosure before you sign, 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."
Chorus One
73#3 of 7
Pick it when
Pick Chorus One if rate transparency matters most — it scores 7/10 to Kiln's 6/10 there (weight 24).
Strength
Governance under custody — 9/10
Tradeoff
Read the Terms of Service before the marketing, and check which entity you are actually signing with. https://chorus.one/terms-of-service, updated March 18, 2026, defines Slashing and then says in 1.3 that 'Bitwise is not responsible in any way for any failure by any supported blockchain Network to transfer Rewards (including any risks of "Slashing")', caps all liability at fees paid in the preceding six months (or $10,000 if none), and contains 'insurance', 'indemnif' and 'coverage' exactly zero times - while live product pages advertise a '$250k/quarter self-insurance pool' whose only explanatory article now 301-redirects to the homepage. If slashing indemnity is why you are shortlisting this operator, that base cover exists only in marketing copy, the institutional layer is explicitly 'upgradeable' (i.e. purchased), no insurer or reinsurer is ever named, and the signed contract allocates the loss to you. Second-order, and the sharper point: the counterparty is ambiguous on the operator's own domain. The Terms of Service name 'Chorus One AG, a Swiss company ... doing business as Bitwise Onchain Solutions', governed by Swiss law with binding arbitration and a class-action waiver - but the disclosure block on https://chorus.one/crypto-research states 'Staking is provided by Attestant Ltd. Doing business as "Bitwise Onchain Solutions" ("BOS")'. Two different legal entities trade under the same name on the same site, and nothing public tells a buyer which one will be on their contract or which law governs it. Establish the contracting entity in writing before diligence goes further.
Self-identify in 10 seconds
Which one is actually for you?
KilnLeads
Choose Kiln if slashing cover matters most
Slashing cover: 6/10 against 3/10 for Chorus One (weight 34)
Lock-up disclosure: 8/10 against 5/10 for Chorus One (weight 22)
KilnScore 79The 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 26 protocol docs pages (2026-09-28 count) — but a slashing base layer whose size it has never quantified, a commission printed for only two of those 26 networks, and a governance posture stated for two niche products while the Cosmos-family chains where delegated stake actually votes are left silent.Strength: Unbonding disclosure — 8/10Watch-out: Read all three parts of the September 2025 breach disclosure before you sign, 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."
Chorus One
Choose Chorus One if rate transparency matters most
Rate transparency: 7/10 against 6/10 for Kiln (weight 24)
Voting from custody: 9/10 against 7/10 for Kiln (weight 20)
Chorus OneScore 73Institutional validator operator now trading as Bitwise Onchain Solutions, running non-custodial delegated staking across 30+ proof-of-stake networks, with a named Ledger Enterprise custody integration and a genuinely public per-network commission feed - but a March 2026 contract that disclaims slashing loss entirely, and two different legal entities named on its own site as the staking provider.Strength: Governance under custody — 9/10Watch-out: Read the Terms of Service before the marketing, and check which entity you are actually signing with. https://chorus.one/terms-of-service, updated March 18, 2026, defines Slashing and then says in 1.3 that 'Bitwise is not responsible in any way for any failure by any supported blockchain Network to transfer Rewards (including any risks of "Slashing")', caps all liability at fees paid in the preceding six months (or $10,000 if none), and contains 'insurance', 'indemnif' and 'coverage' exactly zero times - while live product pages advertise a '$250k/quarter self-insurance pool' whose only explanatory article now 301-redirects to the homepage. If slashing indemnity is why you are shortlisting this operator, that base cover exists only in marketing copy, the institutional layer is explicitly 'upgradeable' (i.e. purchased), no insurer or reinsurer is ever named, and the signed contract allocates the loss to you. Second-order, and the sharper point: the counterparty is ambiguous on the operator's own domain. The Terms of Service name 'Chorus One AG, a Swiss company ... doing business as Bitwise Onchain Solutions', governed by Swiss law with binding arbitration and a class-action waiver - but the disclosure block on https://chorus.one/crypto-research states 'Staking is provided by Attestant Ltd. Doing business as "Bitwise Onchain Solutions" ("BOS")'. Two different legal entities trade under the same name on the same site, and nothing public tells a buyer which one will be on their contract or which law governs it. Establish the contracting entity in writing before diligence goes further.
Criterion by criterion
Scorecard
Published criteria · weight in points of 868 of 8 cells scored. Strength is read from the evidence file; the weight is the published one. Methodology
Slashing cover
by 3 of 10weight 8.2 of 86Kiln leads
Kiln6/10 out of 10
Chorus One3/10 out of 10
Lock-up disclosure
by 3 of 10weight 5.3 of 86Kiln leads
Kiln8/10 out of 10
Chorus One5/10 out of 10
Rate transparency
by 1 of 10weight 5.8 of 86Chorus One leads
Kiln6/10 out of 10
Chorus One7/10 out of 10
Voting from custody
by 2 of 10weight 4.8 of 86Chorus One leads
Kiln7/10 out of 10
Chorus One9/10 out of 10
Score dimensions
weights sum to 86
The published score is five dimensions, each weighted for the category. "Published criteria" is the criteria block above; the other four are the engine's own terms — availability, friction, trust record, measured data. Each bar is one side's points out of that dimension's maximum; the weight beside the name is its points of the 86-point weighted total. The published criteria above can fill 24 of the block’s 30. A weight marked “constant here” belongs to a dimension every ranked product in the category holds at the same value: it still counts in the total, and it orders nothing here.
Availabilityweight 20 of 86 · constant here
Kiln14/20Chorus One14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
Kiln15.9/30Chorus One13.4/30
Kiln leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
Kiln2.7/10Chorus One2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
Kiln3.2/8Chorus One3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
Kiln8.3/18Chorus One8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order
Choose Kiln unless the term Chorus One leads on is the one you are buying.
Pick Chorus One if rate transparency matters most — it scores 7/10 to Kiln's 6/10 there (weight 24).
The published order weighs every criterion the same way for everyone. To weigh them your way, run .
From the published order
Next best action
If this isn't your case
Other matchups worth comparing
How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.
Scored by Do you keep custody and still get to vote — and who presses the button? · 20% (Kiln 7/10, Chorus One 9/10)
Insolvency failure: the firm or issuer that owes you cannot pay.
Scored by If a validator you delegated to gets slashed, who actually writes the cheque? · 34% (Kiln 6/10, Chorus One 3/10)
Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
Scored by How long are the assets locked per network, and did they tell you before you signed? · 22% (Kiln 8/10, Chorus One 5/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Liveness failure, Custody failure, Regulatory failure, Execution failure, Information failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Also scored, as cost, quality or a summary of several families: Can you find the rate you would actually pay without booking a sales call? (24%).
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Kiln scores 6 points above Chorus One, led by slashing cover and lock-up disclosure. Published scores, out of 100: Kiln 79 (rank 1 of 7 staking), Chorus One 73 (rank 3 of 7).
Reviewed means both products compared here was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
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Kiln #1 of 779
Chorus One #3 of 773