In brief

• SharpLink Gaming staked $170 million worth of ETH on Ethereum layer-2 network, Linea.
• In October, the firm announced its intentions to stake up to $200 million on Linea to earn higher risk-adjusted yields.
• Shares of SBET rose 1.4% on Thursday but remain down nearly 37% in the last six months.

Publicly traded Ethereum treasury firm SharpLink Gaming has deployed $170 million worth of ETH to Ethereum layer-2 scaling network, Linea, the firm announced on Thursday. 

The Minneapolis, MN-based firm previously said that it would stake up to $200 million worth of Ethereum as part of a multi-year effort on the network as a way to optimize on-chain yields for its Ethereum holdings. 

“This deal allowed SharpLink to generate additional yield, in excess of its current staking rewards, while pushing the industry to embrace institutional-grade DeFi,” SharpLink CIO Matt Sheffield told Decrypt.

“A public company, deploying into liquid staking, then bridging, all without leaving a qualified custodian,” he added. “This was multiple industry firsts, and it is a milestone on our journey to make our treasury the most productive exposure to ETH.” 

Stockholders were privy to a gain of around 1.4% on Thursday, with shares of SBET changing hands at $10.28 at the close of trading. That mark is more than 33% below SBET’s level when the staking plan was announced in October. 

As the second-largest publicly traded Ethereum treasury firm, SharpLink maintains a treasury of 864,840 ETH valued at nearly $2.7 billion—all of which is staked via its custodians. With its recent deployment on Linea, it will gain re-staking rewards from Eigen Cloud as well as incentives from EtherFi and Linea, in addition to native ETH staking yields.

Though the firm would not disclose incentives on a deal-by-deal basis, Sheffield told Decrypt that the firm intends to “do many more deals of this nature, accretive to our stockholders, as we earn the excess DeFi yields.” 

In September, SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom told Decrypt that it is important for the firm to drive real-world activity to “Ethereum-aligned” products like Linea given its interest in Ethereum’s success. 

But SharpLink is also a member of the Linea Consortium, a group of firms that help manage the distribution of the LINEA token. It also maintains another connection to Linea via Chairman Joseph Lubin, who co-founded Ethereum and is both a founder and CEO of Consensys, the software development firm that incubated Linea’s layer-2 network.