Morgan Stanley Prices ETH and SOL ETFs at 0.14%

Morgan Stanley filed amended registration statements on June 18 for two proposed spot crypto ETF trusts: an Ethereum product expected to trade on NYSE Arca under the ticker MSSE and a Solana trust to trade as MSOL. Both filings set an annual delegated sponsor fee of 0.14% (14 basis points). The registration statements are preliminary and must be declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission before shares can trade.

The Ethereum trust is structured to track ether and the staking rewards generated by a portion of its holdings. The filings state the trust intends to stake between 50% and 80% of its ether holdings under normal market conditions. Staking service providers and custodians are expected to receive an aggregate of about 5% of staking rewards, with the trust retaining the remaining 95%.

The Solana trust allows up to 100% of its Solana holdings to be staked. The Solana documentation specifies the trust will retain approximately 95% of staking rewards and that the delegated sponsor will not receive a portion of those staking rewards.

The 14-basis-point delegated sponsor fee is lower than fees listed for other U.S. ETH and SOL products. Competitor fee figures in the filings include a 0.25% sponsor fee for a major iShares Ethereum product, a 0.15% fee for a smaller ether product from another issuer, a 0.20% launch fee for a Solana staking ETF from a separate provider, and a reported 0.19% net expense ratio for another Solana ETF. A senior ETF analyst described the proposed 0.14% fee as the lowest among ETH and SOL products globally.

The filings include illustrative staking economics. Using a referenced gross Solana staking rate of about 6.28%, a fully staked Solana trust that retains 95% of rewards would generate roughly 5.97% in retained staking rewards before fees and about 5.83% after the 14-basis-point fee. For ether, assuming a gross staking yield near 3% and a staked share between 50% and 80%, retained staking contributions before fees would range from roughly 1.43% to 2.28%, and net yields after the 14-basis-point fee would be about 1.29% to 2.14%.

Market flow data this year showed intermittent institutional flows in non-Bitcoin tokens. Mid-May data indicated bitcoin products had about $982 million in outflows while Solana recorded roughly $55.1 million in inflows and ether saw about $249 million in outflows. Around May 25, U.S. spot ETF figures showed bitcoin ETFs losing about 16,595 BTC over seven days, Solana ETFs adding about 192,835 SOL, and ether ETFs shedding about 105,862 ETH. By the week reported June 1, bitcoin products recorded approximately $1.44 billion in outflows and ether about $257 million. On June 17, U.S. spot ether ETFs reported a single-day inflow of about 9,361 ETH, with seven-day ether flows remaining negative that week.

Morgan Stanley operates in more than 40 countries. Morgan Stanley Investment Management reported approximately $1.8 trillion in assets under management or supervision as of Sept. 30, 2025.

The filings note that the SEC could require further amendments related to staking treatment, custody arrangements, or tax handling before the registration statements become effective and trading can begin.