Frankfurt, Germany, Sept. 03, 2025 — Blocksize, a DeFi infrastructure provider based in Germany, is raising concerns about the hidden costs associated with custodial staking platforms. These costs, they argue, can silently reduce yields, compromise governance, and exert sustained downward pressure on the price of Solana.
Staking is often presented to family offices and institutional investors as a straightforward, low-risk way to generate yield. While native Solana staking typically offers returns of 8.25–10%, custodial platforms often provide significantly lower yields. The difference is retained by the platforms and immediately converted to USD on the open market, creating constant selling pressure that negatively impacts SOL’s price.
However, yield reduction is only part of the problem. Custodial platforms also concentrate network governance power. Delegators who stake through exchanges, for example, may unknowingly relinquish their voting rights. In 2024, Solana’s Proposal 228, which sought to lower inflation to 0% (a change expected to support the price), failed to achieve the required two-thirds supermajority, receiving only about 61% approval. While several factors played a role, concerns persist that exchange-controlled votes may have contributed to the shortfall. In essence, delegators who stake via custodians or exchanges risk having their governance influence used in ways that may not align with their own long-term objectives.
“Family offices anticipate consistent returns from staking their tokens,” stated Christian Labetzsch, Co-Founder of Blocksize. “However, exchanges, for instance, can quietly diminish those returns and utilize governance power in ways that contradict the long-term interests of delegators. This underscores the importance of transparency, non-custodial control, strong validator performance, and regulated operations for delegators.”
The Transparency Gap in Staking
While APY remains a key marketing point, performance alone is no longer sufficient. Professional investors are increasingly focused on:
- Hidden yield deductions through custodial fees and the selling of rewards.
- Risks of slashing and operational vulnerabilities associated with anonymous or unclear validators.
- Governance capture that hinders beneficial ecosystem improvements.
- Inflation and volatility that diminish actual returns.
- Unidentified offshore wallet operators lacking accountability (“Not your keys, not your coins”).
Blocksize addresses these concerns by providing institutional-grade, non-custodial staking that restores control to delegators. Unlike anonymous offshore validators, Blocksize identifies its wallet addresses and operates under German law, ensuring transparency and accountability. Users maintain their governance rights, gain insight into validator performance, and support ecosystem-aligned operators.
Institutional Standards for DeFi
Blocksize operates its infrastructure within Germany’s stringent regulatory environment, offering staking solutions that meet bank-level standards while remaining accessible to non-bank clients. Their services include:
- Customizable staking fees and SLAs for family offices and businesses.
- Geo-redundant infrastructure, monitored 24/7 with automated failover.
- Real-time transparency, with openly published validator performance, governance activity, and node status.
To date, Blocksize has supported over 10 protocols, facilitated 5 million on-chain transactions, and provides reliable on-chain market data for over 9,000 pairs to support a permissionless and equitable DeFi ecosystem.
About Blocksize
Blocksize is a Frankfurt-based DeFi infrastructure provider specializing in non-custodial staking, oracle data, and validator operations. With more than seven years of experience and a well-established compliance framework, Blocksize combines technical reliability with regulatory accountability. The company actively stakes its own funds, participates in protocol governance, and contributes open-source tools to support the broader blockchain ecosystem, making DeFi bankable.
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Disclaimer: The information provided in this press release is not a solicitation for investment, nor is it intended as investment advice, financial advice, or trading advice. It is strongly recommended you practice due diligence, including consultation with a professional financial advisor, before investing in or trading cryptocurrency and securities.
CONTACT: Christian L. info (at) blocksize-capital.com
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