Figment Staking: What the Company Does and How It Works

Figment was founded in 2018 ⁹ by Lorien Gabel, Andrew Cronk and Matt Harrop, who serve as CEO, chief product officer and CTO ¹. Company releases carry a Toronto dateline, and the team works remote-first across 23 countries ¹³.

The company is venture-backed. The Block reported in October 2025 that Figment had raised $165 million from investors including Thoma Bravo, Morgan Stanley and Franklin Templeton, and that it had bought Rated Labs, a firm known for Ethereum and Solana validator performance data. Deal terms were not disclosed ⁴.

Figment sells staking as a managed service rather than as a consumer app:

• Institutional staking. Clients delegate to Figment validators through a point-and-click interface or through custodian and exchange integrations, with reward tracking and reporting ¹².
• Staking and Rewards APIs. Developers can build staking flows, query validators and pull reward statements. The public docs cover Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot, Polygon, Cosmos, Cardano, Avalanche, NEAR and Sui, and also list stablecoin yield endpoints with OpenTrade ⁷.
• ETF and ETP staking. Figment stakes for exchange-traded products, including Grayscale's ETHE, ETH Mini Trust and Solana Trust in the US, and earlier products in Canada, Europe and Latin America ².
• White-label validators. The "Ledger by Figment" Solana validator is one example of a partner-branded validator run by Figment ⁸.

Figment operates the validator software and hardware. The client, or the client's custodian, keeps control of the staked tokens. What happens next depends on the chain:

• Ethereum: 32 ETH per validator is deposited to Ethereum's staking contract with withdrawal credentials set by the client. Figment runs the validator keys that sign blocks and attestations. Exits follow Ethereum's validator queue.
• Delegation chains such as Solana: the holder signs a delegation from their own wallet to a Figment validator. The tokens never leave the holder's address, and unstaking follows the network's cooldown period.

Rewards come from the network, not from Figment, and vary with network conditions and validator performance. Ledger, for instance, tells users that staking rewards are not guaranteed ⁸.

Staking SOL through Ledger by Figment

Ledger Live users can delegate SOL to the Ledger by Figment validator from the Solana asset page: choose "Earn Rewards," pick the validator, enter an amount and confirm the transaction on the hardware wallet ⁸. The SOL remains in the user's own Ledger account. This is the main route by which non-institutional holders use Figment.

Figment earns a commission, a share of the staking rewards its validators generate. It does not publish a standard rate card on the pages checked; institutional terms are set by agreement. For delegation chains, the commission a validator charges is public on-chain and is shown in wallets such as Ledger Live and in block explorers, so check it before delegating. Network fees for delegating, claiming or unstaking are separate.

Slashing is a protocol penalty that destroys part of a validator's stake when it breaks consensus rules, most seriously by double-signing. Figment says it monitors its validators on-chain and notifies customers if a double-sign event affects a Figment-operated validator, and that it provides "multiple layers of coverage" ⁵. The coverage terms (caps, exclusions, payout process) are not public, so institutional clients should read them in their contract.

Ethereum customers can also buy double-sign cover through Nexus Mutual. When it launched in July 2023, Nexus Mutual said it would cover up to 1 ETH per validator and, combined with Figment's own coverage, up to 100% of staked ether for double-sign slashing ⁶. Downtime penalties, which are much smaller, are not the focus of that cover.

On controls, Figment reports SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification, a SOC 1 Type I report for rewards reporting, and in February 2026 full certification under the Node Operator Risk Standard (NORS) for Ethereum, which covers slashing prevention, key management and operational resilience ³. These are audits of processes, not guarantees against loss.

• February 2026: Full NORS certification for Ethereum ³.
• October 2025: Acquisition of Rated Labs ⁴; Grayscale selects Figment for US ETH ETP and Solana Trust staking ².
• July 2023: Nexus Mutual Ethereum slashing cover launched for Figment customers ⁶.