On paper, 2025 for Everstake reads like a sequence of milestones: a new CEO, more networks, institutional presence, new certifications, and another year of strong validator performance. But from inside the company, the year felt different.
It felt like a moment when years of steady, behind-the-scenes work aligned with a clearer sense of purpose. The foundations remained the same, with the same teams, the same discipline around reliability, and the same commitment to infrastructure that simply works, but the posture changed. Everstake began speaking, planning, and operating with the confidence of a company whose role in the ecosystem had become unmistakable.
For the past seven years, Everstake has done what infrastructure companies are supposed to do: stay out of the spotlight, allowing builders and users to move forward without friction.
Leadership, Vision, and Organizational Evolution
Reaching seven years could have been a chance to look back. Instead, it became a moment to define what comes next. After years of expanding into new networks, strengthening our infrastructure, and supporting users across a wide range of ecosystems, Everstake entered 2025 with the momentum and maturity to take on a broader level of responsibility.
That shift became clearer when David Kinitsky joined as CEO. David brings more than a decade of experience across some of the most influential companies in the industry: building Grayscale from the ground up, serving as Fidelity Investments’ first crypto hire, shaping Circle’s strategic pivot to USDC, leading Kraken’s institutional and banking initiatives, and working directly with U.S. regulators on staking clarity. His background in institutional crypto, regulation, and product strategy reinforced a direction Everstake had long been moving toward.
David’s arrival didn’t redirect the company, it refined it. Governance became more structured, internal standards grew more formalized, and the company began presenting its institutional identity without hesitation. It wasn’t a dramatic transformation, but a recognition of the scale at which Everstake was already operating and of the level the company was now prepared to meet.
Everstake’s founder, Sergii Vasylchuk, remained deeply involved in the company’s evolution. As the person who built Everstake from an engineering-first, bootstrapped team into one of the world’s largest non-custodial staking providers, Sergii continued shaping long-term product direction, infrastructure strategy, and R&D. His presence ensured continuity: the same technical rigor, the same builder mindset, the same reliability culture, now paired with a stronger institutional framework.
This internal shift shaped everything that followed. Certifications, audits, network expansions, and partnerships none appeared as isolated moves. They reflected a shared understanding across teams. Everstake wasn’t “growing into” its role anymore. It was entirely inhabited.
Institutional Breakthrough
The first months of 2025 gave Everstake a clearer voice. The rest of the year focused on proving that this voice was supported by real structure and accountability. For years, the company had worked at a level that institutions expect—stable validators, predictable engineering, careful operational processes. But at some point, operating well isn’t enough. Institutions want to see how things work, not only trust that they do.
Certifications, Audits, and Why They Mattered
This is why 2025 became the year of making reliability visible. Everstake completed all five institutional-grade certifications, including SOC 2 Type 2 and a set of ISO/NIST standards. These weren’t symbolic milestones. They confirmed that the way Everstake builds, documents, and maintains its infrastructure matches the expectations of partners who rely on strict internal controls.
For many organizations, these certifications are the starting point for collaboration. Without them, a potential partnership may never progress past the initial conversation. With them, doors opened to custodians, enterprise platforms, wallet integrations, and regulated financial companies that require formal proof of security and process discipline.
Independent audits of the 0.1+ ETH Staking Solution continued this direction. Reviews by Trail of Bits and ChainSecurity validated not only the technical foundations of the product, but also Everstake’s approach to transparency. Publishing audit results became a clear message: this is how the product works, this is how it’s monitored, and this is what was tested. For users and partners, that clarity removes guesswork.
Joining the Circle Alliance added working alongside other companies that focus on interoperability, security, and well-defined infrastructure standards. For Everstake, this wasn’t about visibility, it created a space to contribute to shared technical practices that will shape how networks and platforms interact in the coming years.
Compliance as Part of the Infrastructure
By the end of 2025, compliance will be a formality or a checklist item. It became a part of how Everstake builds. Certifications, audits, documented controls, and participation in formal industry groups allowed the company to move into new partnerships with confidence, not because compliance was “achieved,” but because it was built into the way the organisation already worked.
For a company running thousands of validators across dozens of networks, this shift mattered. It allowed Everstake to work with partners who expect long-term reliability, clear processes, and predictable behaviour, and to do so in a way that stayed true to the company’s engineering culture. It was the next logical step.
Regulatory Clarity and Compliance Leadership
One of the most meaningful shifts in 2025 came from outside the engineering world. The SEC reaffirmed that staking is not a security, removing a long-standing source of uncertainty for institutions. Earlier that year, Everstake participated in a discussion with SEC representatives, providing input grounded in non-custodial validator operations and the practical realities of running staking infrastructure.
For Everstake, the announcement aligned with the company’s approach to building all along. Products were already audited, processes already documented, and validator operations already structured around transparency rather than custodial control. The decision didn’t require Everstake to change course, it simply confirmed that the direction was sound.
This clarity helped partners, wallets, and institutions move forward with greater confidence, a principle that reliable staking starts with clear rules and disciplined engineering.
Upgrades, Records, and Innovation
Within its Ethereum operations, 2025 became a year of measurable technical progress for Everstake. Several milestones reflected how the company’s infrastructure continued to grow in scale and stability:
- 300,000+ ETH staked through our 0.1+ ETH Staking Solution, as we said, marking a new operational horizon for institution-ready staking.
- 110+ ETH MEV captured in February, a result of fine-tuned validator performance and seamless orchestration.
- 130+ ETH MEV in a single hour later in the year, a milestone that spoke less about luck and more about engineering precision.
These achievements were supported by years of engineering work: automated recovery flows, network-specific optimisation, smarter validator orchestration, and the addition of Commit Boost, which helped improve MEV performance further. Most of this happens quietly in the background, but it shapes the experience users see on the surface, like consistent rewards, stable validators, and staking that doesn’t require their attention.
Everstake also entered several new networks and protocols over the year, including Monad, Canton, Somnia, DoubleZero, Story Protocol, DIN AVS Mainnet, Optimum and Jito (Re)staking.
Each launch followed a similar approach, involving careful preparation, proper setup of the infrastructure, and close monitoring once live. For the teams building these protocols, the focus was simple: they needed an operator who treated reliability seriously from day one.
Work around Ethereum continued as well, so we contributed to the Pectra upgrade. Also, Everstake joined Optimum and supported projects like Tenderize on Sei, Magma, aPriori, and FastLane on Monad. These involvements were based on practical experience running validators under constant real-world load, which helped the team assist networks during important upgrade periods.
Overall, 2025 strengthened the technical base on which the company relies. The year showed that Everstake can scale, improve, and support new ecosystems, all while keeping the validator experience straightforward for people who simply want to stake and not worry about the rest.
Ecosystem Growth: Partnerships, Integrations, and Institutional Expansion
2025 showed that strong infrastructure naturally attracts new expectations. As Everstake continued to scale technically and more and more organisations, we became a long-term partner they could build around. This shift had a significant impact on the work done throughout the year.
Institutional Partnerships and What They Enabled
Everstake strengthened its institutional presence through several new partnerships with platforms that now rely on our validators as part of their core infrastructure. Collaborations with Copper, Zodia, Classover, io.finnet, Colossus Digital, and Utila expanded the number of custodians, enterprise networks, and professional platforms offering staking backed by Everstake’s audited, high-uptime operations. Each of these integrations opened the door for institutions to provide secure, non-custodial staking to their users without building their own validator stacks, making Everstake a deeper part of the infrastructure they operate on every day.
Growing User Access Through Wallet Integrations
This year also reshaped how everyday users interacted with Everstake. Integration with imToken expanded access in Asia; being featured in MetaMask Portfolio placed Everstake inside a widely used interface where many users make their first staking decision; and supporting SOL staking in Trezor gave hardware wallet users a secure path into the ecosystem.
These integrations didn’t change Everstake’s audience; they simply made it easier for users to reach the validator they already trusted. For someone using a mobile wallet, a hardware device, or a portfolio dashboard, staking through Everstake has become more accessible and intuitive.
Strengthening the Technical Foundation
Behind the scenes, the company also invested in partnerships that directly supported its infrastructure. A notable example was the collaboration with Cherry Servers, which improved the environment used for high-load Solana operations. Better hardware, cleaner routing, and more resilient setups may not be visible to users, but they affect how consistently validators perform. Throughout 2025, these improvements contributed to a more stable experience across the networks Everstake serves.
A Clearer and More Connected Ecosystem
By the end of the year, the ecosystem around Everstake felt more organized and easier for partners to navigate. Institutions gained a reliable staking partner, wallets received a validator capable of supporting large user flows, and new networks were onboarded by a team familiar with preparing stable infrastructure from day one.
2025 made this growth feel intentional. Each integration, partnership, and new connection contributed to a more accessible and predictable staking experience, one where Everstake played a steady, clearly defined role.
Campaigns of the Year: Bringing Staking Closer to Users
Much of Everstake’s work lives deep in infrastructure, but 2025 was also a year of meeting users where they already make decisions inside their wallets, on their phones, and in familiar interfaces. The campaigns of the year reflected a simple idea: if people are going to explore staking, the experience should feel clear, approachable, and grounded in the same reliability that defines our validators.
Exodus x Everstake
This campaign with Exodus became the standout point of 2025. It combined a widely trusted mobile wallet with Everstake’s infrastructure, giving people an easy way to start staking without overthinking the process. Many users discovered staking for the first time here, through a natural flow within an app they already used every day.
MetaMask Portfolio: ETH and SOL Campaigns
Our own campaigns inside MetaMask Portfolio focused on helping people make staking decisions with confidence. Both the ETH and SOL initiatives were designed to fit seamlessly into the Portfolio interface, a place where users already review their assets.
ZenGo x Everstake
The collaboration with ZenGo reflected the wallet’s focus on simplicity and security. ZenGo designed a clean, minimal staking flow that allowed users to delegate without added complexity, keeping the experience intuitive and aligned with how their users already interact with the wallet.
imToken Staking Campaign
imToken’s audience is large and active, especially across Asia, and the campaign built around this community helped many users try staking through infrastructure that was already audited and refined. The value came from how smoothly the flow worked for people who use imToken as their primary wallet.
Metamask Mobile Wallet x Everstake Staking Dashboard
More users are staking directly from their phones, and Everstake’s appearance in the MetaMask mobile flow for Solana reflected that shift. It became an opportunity for people to interact with Everstake’s validators without switching devices or changing their usual habits.
Across all these campaigns, the intention stayed the same: to make staking easy to reach, easy to understand, and built on the same engineering discipline behind Everstake’s infrastructure. For many users, 2025 was the year staking started to feel familiar, and that was precisely our goal.
Community Expansion and New Formats
2025 was also a year when Everstake invested more time and energy into the people who use, study, and build around staking. Infrastructure may be the core of the company, but the crypto community, developers, researchers, governance participants, early adopters, and wallet users are the layer that brings this infrastructure to life.
EverstakeNFTClub
One of the most visible moments of the year was the launch of EverstakeNFTClub, a continuous NFT-driven initiative designed as a long-term engagement format. It created a simple way for users to stay connected with Everstake’s updates, campaigns, and ecosystem activity, giving the community a recognizable identity without turning it into a one-off activation.
Neon Dev Bootcamp and Educational Initiatives
Everstake partnered with developer communities as well. Participation in the Neon Dev Bootcamp provided technical guidance to teams exploring EVM capabilities on Solana. These sessions weren’t promotional; they were practical conversations with builders who needed stable infrastructure and clear answers. This format supports developers with real expertise rather than high-level abstractions.
Becoming a Cardano DRep
This year also marked Everstake’s formal entry into governance mechanisms. Becoming an official Cardano DRep gave the company a structured role in how the ecosystem evolves. It was about responsibility: representing delegators with informed, transparent decision-making backed by the operational experience of running validators across dozens of networks.
Events and Meetups
Everstake spent more time meeting the ecosystem in person. We hosted and co-hosted gatherings across Singapore, Mexico City, Dubai, Kyiv, and major conference hubs from relaxed Proof-of-Run and Proof-of-Drinks meetups to technical sessions and validator-focused discussions.
Also we spent more time on the road than ever before, meeting builders, institutions, and ecosystem teams across every major blockchain hub. Our team joined headline events like Token2049 in both Singapore and Dubai, Money20/20, ETHCC, Digital Asset Summit, Paris Blockchain Week, and industry-defining gatherings such as Staking Summit Dubai and Proof of Talk. From New York to Hong Kong, Vienna to Bangkok, our teams spoke with partners, met many of you in person, and helped move conversations about staking, infrastructure, and institutional adoption forward.
These events created space for real conversations with builders, partners, and users, helping shape collaborations and deepen our understanding of the networks we support. It was a reminder that even the most reliable infrastructure is ultimately built for people and meeting them matters.
Everstake in 2026
Looking ahead, the focus for 2026 is to continue to strengthen the parts of the company that proved essential this year. This means deeper work on tooling, monitoring, and validator performance, the kinds of improvements that are rarely visible but make the entire system more dependable.
On the institutional side, Everstake plans to build on the foundations set in 2025: audited products, predictable operations, clearer compliance frameworks, and partnerships that rely on long-term stability rather than short campaigns. Several new networks launched this year will move into more mature phases in 2026, and Everstake will continue supporting them with the same approach that shaped our multi-network work so far: careful onboarding, reliable operations, and close collaboration with protocol teams.
Nothing dramatic is changing. The priorities remain the same: stronger infrastructure, transparent processes, and products that help people stake without complexity.
2026 will continue this trajectory—steady, practical, and aligned with the company’s long-term role in the ecosystem.
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Everstake, Inc. or any of its affiliates is a software platform that provides infrastructure tools and resources for users but does not offer investment advice or investment opportunities, manage funds, facilitate collective investment schemes, provide financial services or take custody of, or otherwise hold or manage, customer assets. Everstake, Inc. or any of its affiliates does not conduct any independent diligence on or substantive review of any blockchain asset, digital currency, cryptocurrency or associated funds. Everstake, Inc. or any of its affiliates’s provision of technology services allowing a user to stake digital assets is not an endorsement or a recommendation of any digital assets by it. Users are fully and solely responsible for evaluating whether to stake digital assets.
