Kiln scores 12 points above Everstake, led by slashing cover, lock-up disclosure, and voting from custody. Kiln ranks #1 and Everstake #5 of 7 published staking. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.
Kiln79
vs
EVEverstake67
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #1 and #5 of 7
Kiln scores 12 points above Everstake, led by slashing cover, lock-up disclosure, and voting from custody.
Kiln #1 of 779
EVEverstake #5 of 767
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 3 of 4 published criteria; Everstake on 1. The terms sum to the gap.
TermKilnEverstakeWeightPoints
Slashing cover6/101/108.2+10.6for Kiln+5.4 of 32
Rate transparency6/107/105.8−1.5for Everstake−0.8 of 32
Lock-up disclosure8/107/105.3+1.4for Kiln+0.7 of 32
Voting from custody7/106/104.8+1.2for Kiln+0.6 of 32
Net of the terms+11.7
Reproduced gap+11.7
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below7967+12.0
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."EverstakeScore 67Cayman-domiciled non-custodial validator operator claiming 130+ networks and $7B+ staked, which publishes a numeric per-network commission and a 14-day fee-change notice on its own pages without a sales call — while its Terms of Use expressly disclaim all liability for slashing losses and cap total liability at six months of fees, and its pages name no insurer, limit or policy.Strength: Unbonding disclosure — 7/10Watch-out: Read the Terms of Use before you read the Ethereum page. Everstake names no insurer, no limit and no policy anywhere, and the one word that suggested cover is gone: the "Everstake's Insured and Auto-Compounding Staking Solution" line its Ethereum page carried in August was absent on 2026-09-28, when "insur" occurred 0 times on https://everstake.com/staking/protocols/ethereum (the old everstake.one address now 301-redirects there) and its only slashing mention was a generic risk line. Meanwhile https://everstake.com/terms-of-use states in writing: "Everstake shall not be held liable for any losses incurred due to slashing penalties imposed by a Blockchain Network", with all remaining liability capped at "the maximum of the Validator Fees paid by you to us during the six (6) month period preceding the event causing such liability" and any claim waived unless notified in writing within six months. On a 7% commission, that cap is roughly 3.5% of one year's rewards on the affected stake — an amount that would not cover a meaningful slashing event, let alone the stake. Everstake's compensating strength is real and unusually rare: a numeric commission on most networks it documents, a 14-day fee-change notice, and an explicit self-serve-versus-institutional tier split, all published without a sales call. Two caveats on that price transparency, both found on re-verification: the Aleo and Monad pages each print TWO contradictory Everstake fees (Aleo 5% in the hero vs 10% in the staking details; Monad 15% in the hero vs 5% in the staking details), so confirm your network's rate in writing rather than trusting the headline number; and eleven of the 33 protocol URLs in Everstake's own sitemap do not resolve to a protocol page at all, serving the generic staking index instead. Buy it for price transparency and custody-workflow fit, not for loss protection, and if slashing indemnity matters, get it written into the institutional agreement in figures with a named underwriter — because on the public record no such instrument exists.
Quick facts
At a glance
2 of 3 rows read the same for both.
FactKilnEverstake
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.Everstake's Ethereum page (https://everstake.com/staking/protocols/ethereum; the old everstake.one address now 301-redirects there; fetched 28 September 2026) prints a three-tier table. Easy Stake: "Stake as little as 0.01 ETH with Everstake.", Fee "10%". Institutional: "Stake $500K+ worth of ETH with Everstake.", Fee "Lower". Custom: "Stake 320+ ETH with Everstake and enjoy special conditions.", Fee "Custom", with "Contact Us". The page summary repeats "Everstake offers non-custodial Ethereum staking from as low as 0.01 ETH , with a 10% commission and current APR 3.4 - 10% on staking rewards." So 10% is the published self-serve rate; the institutional rate is printed only as the word "Lower" and the custom rate is set in a sales conversation. The Terms of Use say fees are a percentage of staking rewards and may be changed on 14 days' notice on the website.
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 Everstake's 1/10 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."
EV
Everstake
67#5 of 7
Pick it when
Pick Everstake if rate transparency matters most — it scores 7/10 to Kiln's 6/10 there (weight 24).
Strength
Unbonding disclosure — 7/10
Tradeoff
Read the Terms of Use before you read the Ethereum page. Everstake names no insurer, no limit and no policy anywhere, and the one word that suggested cover is gone: the "Everstake's Insured and Auto-Compounding Staking Solution" line its Ethereum page carried in August was absent on 2026-09-28, when "insur" occurred 0 times on https://everstake.com/staking/protocols/ethereum (the old everstake.one address now 301-redirects there) and its only slashing mention was a generic risk line. Meanwhile https://everstake.com/terms-of-use states in writing: "Everstake shall not be held liable for any losses incurred due to slashing penalties imposed by a Blockchain Network", with all remaining liability capped at "the maximum of the Validator Fees paid by you to us during the six (6) month period preceding the event causing such liability" and any claim waived unless notified in writing within six months. On a 7% commission, that cap is roughly 3.5% of one year's rewards on the affected stake — an amount that would not cover a meaningful slashing event, let alone the stake. Everstake's compensating strength is real and unusually rare: a numeric commission on most networks it documents, a 14-day fee-change notice, and an explicit self-serve-versus-institutional tier split, all published without a sales call. Two caveats on that price transparency, both found on re-verification: the Aleo and Monad pages each print TWO contradictory Everstake fees (Aleo 5% in the hero vs 10% in the staking details; Monad 15% in the hero vs 5% in the staking details), so confirm your network's rate in writing rather than trusting the headline number; and eleven of the 33 protocol URLs in Everstake's own sitemap do not resolve to a protocol page at all, serving the generic staking index instead. Buy it for price transparency and custody-workflow fit, not for loss protection, and if slashing indemnity matters, get it written into the institutional agreement in figures with a named underwriter — because on the public record no such instrument exists.
Self-identify in 10 seconds
Which one is actually for you?
KilnLeads
Choose Kiln if slashing cover matters most
Slashing cover: 6/10 against 1/10 for Everstake (weight 34)
Lock-up disclosure: 8/10 against 7/10 for Everstake (weight 22)
Voting from custody: 7/10 against 6/10 for Everstake (weight 20)
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."
EVEverstake
Choose Everstake if rate transparency matters most
Rate transparency: 7/10 against 6/10 for Kiln (weight 24)
EverstakeScore 67Cayman-domiciled non-custodial validator operator claiming 130+ networks and $7B+ staked, which publishes a numeric per-network commission and a 14-day fee-change notice on its own pages without a sales call — while its Terms of Use expressly disclaim all liability for slashing losses and cap total liability at six months of fees, and its pages name no insurer, limit or policy.Strength: Unbonding disclosure — 7/10Watch-out: Read the Terms of Use before you read the Ethereum page. Everstake names no insurer, no limit and no policy anywhere, and the one word that suggested cover is gone: the "Everstake's Insured and Auto-Compounding Staking Solution" line its Ethereum page carried in August was absent on 2026-09-28, when "insur" occurred 0 times on https://everstake.com/staking/protocols/ethereum (the old everstake.one address now 301-redirects there) and its only slashing mention was a generic risk line. Meanwhile https://everstake.com/terms-of-use states in writing: "Everstake shall not be held liable for any losses incurred due to slashing penalties imposed by a Blockchain Network", with all remaining liability capped at "the maximum of the Validator Fees paid by you to us during the six (6) month period preceding the event causing such liability" and any claim waived unless notified in writing within six months. On a 7% commission, that cap is roughly 3.5% of one year's rewards on the affected stake — an amount that would not cover a meaningful slashing event, let alone the stake. Everstake's compensating strength is real and unusually rare: a numeric commission on most networks it documents, a 14-day fee-change notice, and an explicit self-serve-versus-institutional tier split, all published without a sales call. Two caveats on that price transparency, both found on re-verification: the Aleo and Monad pages each print TWO contradictory Everstake fees (Aleo 5% in the hero vs 10% in the staking details; Monad 15% in the hero vs 5% in the staking details), so confirm your network's rate in writing rather than trusting the headline number; and eleven of the 33 protocol URLs in Everstake's own sitemap do not resolve to a protocol page at all, serving the generic staking index instead. Buy it for price transparency and custody-workflow fit, not for loss protection, and if slashing indemnity matters, get it written into the institutional agreement in figures with a named underwriter — because on the public record no such instrument exists.
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 5 of 10weight 8.2 of 86Kiln leads
Kiln6/10 out of 10
Everstake1/10 out of 10
Lock-up disclosure
by 1 of 10weight 5.3 of 86Kiln leads
Kiln8/10 out of 10
Everstake7/10 out of 10
Rate transparency
by 1 of 10weight 5.8 of 86Everstake leads
Kiln6/10 out of 10
Everstake7/10 out of 10
Voting from custody
by 1 of 10weight 4.8 of 86Kiln leads
Kiln7/10 out of 10
Everstake6/10 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
Kiln14/20Everstake14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
Kiln15.9/30Everstake11.4/30
Kiln leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
Kiln2.7/10Everstake2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
Kiln3.2/8Everstake3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
Kiln8.3/18Everstake8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order
Choose Kiln unless the term Everstake leads on is the one you are buying.
Pick Everstake 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, Everstake 6/10)
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, Everstake 1/10)
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, Everstake 7/10)
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 12 points above Everstake, led by slashing cover, lock-up disclosure, and voting from custody. Published scores, out of 100: Kiln 79 (rank 1 of 7 staking), Everstake 67 (rank 5 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