ARK and 21Shares have withdrawn staking plans from their Ethereum ETF offerings.

ARK Invest and 21Shares have removed staking plans from their updated spot Ether exchange-traded fund offerings.

The updated filing, filed on Friday, May 10, removed a provision that 21Shares would hold a portion of the fund’s assets as equity through a third-party provider. Previously, “Patrons may from time to time stake a portion of the Trust’s assets through one or more trusted staking providers.”

In the February 7 filing, the companies included a provision stating that 21Shares expects to receive ETH as compensation for staking and that it intends to classify the resulting returns as income generated by the fund.

However, the latest submission removed the relevant section but retained broader comments, including losses from penalty cuts, temporarily inaccessible funds during bonding and unbonding, and the potential impact on the price of Ether (ETH).

Depending on the Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said the update may be an effort to improve the application in response to potential feedback from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), despite the lack of official comment.

Alternatively, Balchunas suggests, the change could be a last-ditch effort or a strategic move to limit the information the SEC can base a potential rejection on.

In September 2023, ARK Invest and 21Shares submitted an application for a spot Ether ETF. The fund aims to provide direct exposure to Ether and, once approved, will trade on the Cboe BZX Exchange. The exchange utilizes the CME CF Ether-Dollar benchmark rate (New York variant).

Related: JPMorgan reports holding shares of several spot Bitcoin ETFs.

The sponsor is 21Shares, Delaware Trust Company is the trustee, Coinbase Custody Trust Company holds the underlying Ether assets, and ARK Investment Management is acting as sub-advisor marketing the shares.

The SEC has been delaying its decision on the spo. The agency postponed a decision on the Invesco Galaxy spot Ethereum ETF proposal and also postponed deadlines for other proposals from Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, VanEck and BlackRock.

Regulators have until May 23rd to decide whether to apply VanEck to spot Ethereum, followed by Ark and 21Shares by May 24th.

The SEC approved the listing and trading of a Bitcoin spot ETF on U.S. exchanges in January. However, optimism about the approval of a spot Ethereum ETF has diminished in recent months, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas. Lowering He estimated the likelihood of a spot Ethereum ETF being approved by the end of May at around 70% to 25%.

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