Have Your Stake And Eat It Too

The Amended Generic Listing Standards Open Crypto ETPs to Staking Receipt Tokens

Key takeaways

• On July 27, 28 and 29, 2026, the SEC approved amendments to the generic listing standards for Commodity-Based Trust Shares on Nasdaq, NYSE Arca Cboe BZX, respectively. These amendments allow for 15 percent of the trust’s NAV to consist of “digital commodities” that fall outside the standard eligibility criteria of the generic listing standards.
• JitoSOL, the staking receipt token of the Jito Stake Pool, meets the definition of a digital commodity under these amendments such that any trust listed under these standards can hold up to 15 percent of NAV in JitoSOL today, with no product-specific rule filing.
• A JitoSOL position is fully staked and fully liquid at the same time. We set out below the legal argument, the economics, and objective standards for qualifying receipt tokens.

On July 27 and 28, 2026, the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (“SEC”) approved amendments to the generic listing standards for Commodity-Based Trust Shares on Nasdaq and NYSE Arca (the “GLS Amendments”), with the SEC granting accelerated approval to Cboe BZX's substantially identical amendment to Rule 14.11(e)(4). All three listing exchanges now operate under the amended standards.

The consequence for issuers is direct. Any Commodity-Based Trust Share listed in reliance on the amended standards can hold up to 15 percent of its net asset value in a “digital commodity,” defined in language drawn from the SEC and CFTC’s joint interpretive guidance, effective March 23, 2026 (the “Interpretation”): a digital asset that “is intrinsically linked to and derives its value from the programmatic operation of a functional crypto system, as well as supply and demand dynamics, rather than from the expectation of profits from the essential managerial efforts of others.”

These GLS Amendments answer a number of outstanding questions, but one specific one regarding staking — where demand for this in ETPs has been settled: staking receipt tokens (“SRTs”) that meet the definition of digital commodity can be included in any ETP without a product-specific rule filing. JitoSOL, the SRT of the Jito Stake Pool, meets the amended standards’ definition of a digital commodity head on. 

Here, we provide a discussion of the rule change, the legal argument for how JitoSOL meets these requirements, and the reasons an SRT offers powerful efficiencies for staking inside an exchange traded product (“ETP”).

JitoSOL Is a Digital Commodity

As we argued in the March 2025 Securities Classification Report, JitoSOL was not then — and is not now — a security.  Those arguments fit precisely into the definition of “digital commodity” offered in the GLS Amendments.  JitoSOL’s value “is intrinsically linked to and derives its value from the programmatic operation of a functional crypto system, as well as supply and demand dynamics, rather than from the expectation of profits from the essential managerial efforts of others.”

A staking receipt token is not a security. As an initial matter, the Interpretation itself defines SRTs as crypto assets evidencing a depositor’s ownership of the deposited digital commodities and the rewards that accrue to them, and states that they change none of the rights or obligations of the deposited asset; they are characterized as receipts for the underlying staked asset. In the Interpretation, the SEC concludes that covered protocol staking activities, expressly including the generating, issuing and redeeming of SRTs, does not involve the offer and sale of a security. A receipt for a non-security (digital commodity, like SOL) is not a security.

JitoSOL’s value comes from the programmatic operation of a functional crypto system. The token's value has exactly two inputs: the market price of SOL, and the protocol-determined rewards that accrue to the staked position in the Jito Stake Pool. Both are programmatic outputs of the Solana network, and the underlying functioning of the Solana staking contract — inherent to the Solana network protocol — that underpins the Jito Stake Pool. 

JitoSOL’s value does not derive from the “essential managerial efforts of others.”  The March 2025 Securities Classification Report answers this question directly.  No managerial effort sits anywhere between a depositor’s SOL and the rewards that accrue. Validator selection for the Jito Stake Pool is performed by StakeNet, open-source code deployed on the Solana blockchain that scores validators on objective, publicly observable performance data and delegates stake across roughly 250 of them, rebalancing on a fixed cadence. Changes require an on-chain vote of the Jito DAO, whose JTO governance token is spread across roughly 63,000 wallets, and neither Jito Labs nor Jito Foundation has ever voted its tokens.  Regardless, none of these technological functions constitute “managerial efforts” sufficient to take a cryptoasset out of “digital commodity” status according to the Interpretation.

The value of JitoSOL depends entirely on the functioning of the Solana network where network fees are algorithmic, capped and published on-chain. A JitoSOL holder’s return has the same two sources as the return on directly staked SOL: the price of SOL and the rewards the protocol pays for validation services. 

We note that the Interpretation describes receipt tokens as issued “on a one-for-one basis,” and JitoSOL, a reward-bearing SRT, redeems today for more than one SOL: it redeems for the underlying SOL deposited plus the pro rata share of staking rewards owed to the SRT holder. This is already contemplated in the Interpretation (i.e., a redemption ratio that begins at one-to-one and rises as rewards accrue) and does not change the nature of the asset from a digital commodity into something else.  

Your Two Main Questions, Answered

“A digital commodity doesn’t generate a passive yield.” The Interpretation says a digital commodity has no intrinsic economic properties such as generating a passive yield or conveying rights to the income, profits or assets of a business enterprise, entity, promisor or obligor. Read whole, the clause excludes entitlements running against an enterprise. Staking rewards are payment from the network for validation services, generated programmatically, with no obligor behind them, and no liquid staking provider guarantees, fixes or sets them. The objection also proves too much. The release names SOL and ether as paradigm digital commodities and lists staking among the technical rights a digital commodity conveys. Staked SOL accrues rewards. If accrual alone disqualified an asset, the release’s own examples would fail its definition the moment they were staked.

“The generic standards aren’t for novel structures.” The exchanges represented that the standards apply to products known and contemplated at adoption, meaning trusts holding digital commodities, and that the buffer excludes things like non-fungible assets and collectibles. An SRT, held in a trust whose primary asset is SOL, meets that description: it is fungible, native to the same chain, and a claim on the very commodity the trust already owns. The two agencies had also defined SRTs and interpreted the status of liquid staking four months before these amendments were approved. On surveillance, the buffer’s own design supplies the answer; the underlying digital commodity must independently satisfy the eligibility criteria, and a surveillance framework that covers SOL reaches an instrument whose value derives from SOL.

Although the SEC recently issued a request for comment relating to a Proposed Rule for “Novel ETFs,” we believe that this does not disqualify or otherwise change how to think about inclusion of SRTs that meet the “digital commodity” definition under the GLS Amendments.

Objective Standards, and JitoSOL Meets Them

Some SRTs may not meet the standard, or may not meet general standards for inclusion in ETPs.  We propose objective, technology-neutral criteria to assist issuers and exchanges sort through the various SRTs for quality assurance standards.

• Legal characterization. Conforms to the Interpretation’s definition of an SRT: fully backed by the underlying digital commodity; redeemable for that asset and its accrued rewards, subject only to the protocol’s unbonding period; issued through a non-custodial protocol or smart contract; no guaranteed or predetermined return; fees publicly disclosed and capped.
• Asset-level standards. Issued on the same consensus chain as the underlying, so no bridge risk enters; demonstrated price equivalence to the underlying over a meaningful look-back on venues where both trade; an underlying digital commodity that independently satisfies the generic listing standards; a trading history on U.S.-regulated centralized exchanges.
• Operational standards. Open-source smart contracts independently audited, with results public; algorithmic, auditable delegation across a meaningfully diversified share of the network's validator set; a demonstrated record of rewards actually paid to holders; a qualified custodian offering both custody and mint-and-redeem capability.

JitoSOL satisfies all of them today. It is native to Solana. SOL trades on Intermarket Surveillance Group member markets and underlies CFTC-regulated futures. The Jito Stake Pool’s audits are published. Delegation spans a significant percentage of Solana’s validator set. Rewards have accrued to holders continuously since the pool's deployment in late 2022, and Anchorage Digital and BitGo provide institutional custody with full mint and redeem.

JitoSOL has also already been held inside a U.S.-listed ETP for more than a year. REX-Osprey added JitoSOL to the REX-Osprey™ SOL + Staking ETF (Cboe BZX: SSK) in July 2025, and the fund has carried an allocation of approximately 5 percent of net assets. SSK is a registered fund under the Investment Company Act of 1940 rather than a Commodity-Based Trust Share, so we offer this as operating experience rather than as precedent for the GLS Amendments, and we draw no conclusions from it about redemption liquidity or tracking. What it does show is the threshold question a sponsor asks first: an SRT can be acquired, custodied, valued daily and reported inside a U.S. ETP, across a full year of Solana market conditions, and remain in the portfolio throughout.

This makes JitoSOL an exceptionally strong candidate for inclusion in ETPs under the GLS Amendments and general standards of safety and security.

A Receipt Token Is A Strong Efficiency Mechanism for a Staked ETP

We have long advocated for the benefits of including SRTs as a staking mechanism inside ETPs. We believe this remains the case — and long-term hope to see a fully staked ETP using SRTs — and reiterate our arguments on this below.

Capital efficiency. A trust that stakes directly must hold an unstaked buffer or arrange to borrow the underlying asset to fund redemptions during the unbonding period, and sponsors have disclosed as much, including that such financing arrangements may prove unavailable or insufficient when redemptions arrive. Every unstaked unit earns nothing, and a credit line is a cost that lands on shareholders while typically covering only part of the fund. An SRT removes the tradeoff, and allows for various avenues of capital efficiency — either directly unstaking, redemptions on centralized exchanges or redemptions on decentralized venues, all providing significant liquidity.

Operational simplicity. Validator selection, performance monitoring, reward accrual and rebalancing all run through open, audited, self-executing code. A sponsor holding the token never claims a reward or reconciles an off-chain payment cycle; the redemption ratio does that work continuously.

NAV precision. Net asset value is the product of three continuously observable quantities: units held, the current redemption ratio, and the price of SOL. Live price discovery on centralized exchanges means the figure can be computed accurately at any moment. Direct staking pays rewards off-chain at irregular intervals, which opens gaps between what a portfolio composition file reports and what the trust holds.

A tight, measurable arbitrage band. Receipt tokens trade continuously on centralized and decentralized venues and redeem at the pool, which disciplines any gap between market price and underlying value. Austin Campbell’s September 2025 analysis of the correlation between JitoSOL and SOL measured hourly price correlation between JitoSOL and SOL of approximately 0.9979 on OKX and 0.9985 on Coinbase, with a small, non-directional basis consistent with continuous arbitrage between the mint-and-redeem path and secondary markets. During the October 10, 2025 market stress event, JitoSOL tracked SOL throughout even as price dislocations hit related instruments across venues. In the scenario a fund board asks about first, a total disappearance of secondary liquidity, the holder still owns a claim on a specific quantity of SOL plus accrued rewards, redeemable at the pool after the same unbonding period that applies to directly staked assets.

What to Do Now

If you list under the amended generic standards, you hold 15 percent of NAV in new capacity as of the July approvals.  This is the perfect time to add an SRT — and test it against direct staking on capital efficiency, arbitrage behavior, operational load and NAV precision.

We’re excited to work with issuers to bring to life our long-time vision of including JitoSOL in every Solana-based ETP.

We are glad to walk through any of the above, including the diligence materials behind the criteria. Please contact Kevin Beardsley, [email protected], who runs Institutional Growth.