Morgan Stanley Investment Management has launched two new crypto exchange-traded products — the Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust (NYSE Arca: MSSE) and the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust (NYSE Arca: MSOL) — which began trading on July 28. Both track their underlying assets using CoinDesk benchmark rates, both charge a 0.14% expense ratio, and both do something most US crypto funds still don't: stake a portion of their holdings and pass the rewards through to investors.
What actually launched. MSSE tracks ether; MSOL tracks SOL. The 0.14% sponsor fee undercuts the field — below Grayscale's Mini Ethereum Trust at 0.15% and Franklin Templeton's Solana product at 0.19%, according to SoSoValue data. The funds follow Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin Trust (MSBT), launched earlier this year as the first crypto ETP from a US bank-affiliated asset manager, which had grown to more than $381 million in assets under management by mid-July. Together, they extend an MSIM ETF/ETP suite that now exceeds $14 billion across 22 products.
The detail that matters: staking passthrough. This is what separates these funds from a plain spot ETF. Both products intend to stake part of their holdings to earn network rewards — and Morgan Stanley has said it will not keep any of those staking rewards, passing the proceeds entirely to fund investors. In plain terms: you get spot price exposure plus the network yield, inside a ticker you can buy in an ordinary brokerage account, without ever running a validator, managing a wallet, or touching a seed phrase. That combination — regulated wrapper, spot exposure, and staking income passed through — is a genuinely different product from the first wave of crypto ETFs.
Why the timing is notable. The launch reflects how far the institutional story has moved. Staked ETH hit a record 40.2 million ether in Q2 2026 — about a third of total supply, worth roughly $63 billion — while nearly 68% of Solana's circulating supply remains staked even as network yields have compressed. In other words, the assets underneath these funds are increasingly locked up by long-term holders, tightening liquid supply. Morgan Stanley is packaging that dynamic into a product its wealth-management clients can actually buy.
The real test isn't the launch — it's the flows. A launch is easy; sustained capital is the scoreboard. As several analysts have noted, the key question is whether MSSE and MSOL attract genuinely new institutional money or simply pull existing allocations away from competing issuers. The staking passthrough and rock-bottom fee are clearly designed to win that competition. And live staking introduces its own variable: real returns now depend on actual validator performance, not just the price of the coin.
The European angle: staking-enabled crypto ETPs have existed in Europe for a while — the ETP structure and Switzerland's product ecosystem were early to yield-bearing crypto products, and MiCA gives European issuers a defined framework to build within. What's shifting is the US catching up, with a bank-affiliated giant normalizing staked-crypto exposure for mainstream investors. For European and CEE investors, it's a reminder that the regulated-yield product category they've had access to is now going global — and that the competition among issuers on fees and features is about to get much sharper.
What to watch: early AUM figures for MSSE and MSOL, whether the staking rewards materialize as advertised once validator performance is live, and whether rival issuers respond by cutting their own fees or adding staking passthrough of their own.
Not financial advice — always do your own research before investing.
