SharpLink entered 2026 as one of the largest corporate holders of Ethereum, with a treasury approaching $3B in ETH. The company moved quickly to convert that concentration into active yield and market-facing services, deploying significant balances to Layer‑2s, staking and restaking programs and planning direct financing for other protocols.
In early January 2026 SharpLink deployed roughly $170M of its ETH to the Linea Layer‑2, part of a multi‑hundred‑million dollar program the company described as a staged, risk‑managed commitment.
Management has said it intends to allocate up to $200M to Linea over time and to use native staking, restaking protocols and liquid restaking tokens to boost risk‑adjusted yields.
The company reported generating about $33M from Ethereum staking to date, and signaled a clear shift from passive custody toward active capital markets operations: lending, liquidity provision and institutional participation in onchain markets. That repositioning aims to monetize the treasury beyond simple price exposure to ETH.
Chalom has described 2026 as the “year of productivity” for digital‑asset treasuries and emphasized the firm’s long horizon. As he put it, “We’re built so that when ETH goes up, our stock price benefits. When ETH goes down, we have no reason to sell.” That line captures SharpLink’s stated objective to prioritize capital preservation while seeking incremental returns.
Staking strategy by SharpLink
Analysts and commentators have offered mixed valuations as the company pairs large ETH concentration with active yield strategies. Management projects sizable addressable markets it can pursue with its balance sheet: tokenized real‑world assets (which it pegged to a possible $300B opportunity by 2026) and a significant uptick in institutional ETH allocations, including sovereign wealth funds that Chalom said could increase holdings five‑ to tenfold.
For traders and treasuries the operational implications are clear: SharpLink’s approach increases onchain flows and could amplify liquidity on the Layer‑2s and protocols where it deploys capital, but it also concentrates counterparty and protocol risk.
The company emphasizes staged allocations and partner custody arrangements to mitigate those exposures.
Investors will now watch adoption metrics and institutional flows through 2026 — tokenized RWA take‑up, onchain TVL and large institutional ETH allocations — as the practical tests of SharpLink’s thesis; those developments will determine whether its active treasury model meaningfully decouples performance from raw ETH price moves.
