Josh Deems is the Institutional Business Development Lead at Figment – a firm specializing in institutional staking solutions.

Figment serves over 250 institutional clients, offering point-and-click-staking portfolio reports, performance insights, APIs for seamless integrations, and third-party custody solutions.

Like many prominent figures in the crypto space, Deems will be speaking at Benzinga’s Future of Digital Assets event on Nov. 14 in New York City. He will join a panel titled "Staking: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities" alongside Martin Leinweber and Joe Levin.

Deems started his career at S&P Global before working for two out of the Big 4 in PwC and EY. He pivoted to blockchain as an assistant vice president of Emerging Technologies before becoming a founding employee at Fidelity Digital Assets – the largest crypto initiative from a traditional financial institution.

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Staking As Ethereum’s Foundation

In a recent article, Deems and Leinweber reflected on the current state of the Ethereum ecosystem. They point out that an Ethereum ETF must incorporate staking, as staking is the modern-day operating system of Ethereum.

Furthermore, they argue that staking produces passive income for their owners and contributes to Ethereum’s network security. As more validators join the network, the cost to attack Ethereum exponentially rises, creating a more secure environment for transactions and smart contracts.  Also, since Ethereum’s supply has declined since the merge, institutions engaging in staking might be capturing an increasingly valuable asset.

Still, they’re aware that institutional operations face different challenges. For example, the dynamic unbonding period of Ethereum means that the assets aren’t immediately liquid once staked. They propose a solution where an Ethereum ETF could strategically stake only 50% of its holdings as a risk management strategy.

It is worth noting that Figment offers Liquid Staking solutions. In this scenario, when token holders stake their tokens, they receive receipt tokens that can be sold immediately.

Growth Through Partnerships

Figment recently announced a partnership with MarketVector – a leader in digital asset indexing. Both companies are looking to leverage their expertise to provide better institutional solutions.

"By combining Figment’s leading on-chain data capabilities with MarketVector’s benchmarking expertise, we are poised to unlock new opportunities for institutions offering investors exposure to digital assets," Deems said.

"We envision a new paradigm, where asset managers are able to provide products with staking rewards that are benchmarked against our indexes," he added.

Want to gain valuable insights from the pioneers of digital assets who are creating the most exciting tokens in DeFi and NFTs? Don’t miss the opportunity to connect with founders, investors, and industry experts on Nov. 14 in New York City at Benzinga’s Future of Digital Assets conference.

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