Three tokens keep coming up when people talk about liquid staking on Ethereum: stETH, rETH and cbETH. They all do the same job on paper. You send ETH, you get a receipt back, the receipt earns staking rewards. Under the hood, though, they work differently — and those small differences matter more than any single APY number on a dashboard.
Here's a plain-English tour of what makes each one tick, and how to think about picking one.
The three tokens in one table
All numbers here are approximate and shift week to week. Treat them as a rough sketch, not a quote.
| Token | Issuer | Design | Typical fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| stETH | Lido DAO | Rebasing — your balance ticks up daily | Around 10% of rewards |
| rETH | Rocket Pool | Reward-bearing — the price of rETH grows against ETH | Roughly 14% of rewards, split with node operators |
| cbETH | Coinbase | Reward-bearing — price of cbETH grows against ETH | About 25% of rewards |
All three earn from the same underlying ETH validator rewards, so the raw yield before fees is nearly identical. Where they split is in who runs the validators, how you get your ETH back, and how easy the token is to use in other apps.
How each token actually pays you
stETH uses a rebasing model. If you hold 10 stETH today, tomorrow you might hold 10.0016. The number in your wallet goes up on its own. That's neat, but some DeFi apps and exchanges struggle with rebasing tokens, which is why Lido also offers wstETH — a wrapped, non-rebasing version.
rETH and cbETH keep the balance the same but let the token itself become more valuable against ETH. One rETH might redeem for 1.09 ETH after a year of rewards, illustratively. That design plays nicer with most smart contracts because the balance isn't quietly changing behind your back. If any of this feels new, our plain-English intro to liquid staking covers the basics first.
Who actually runs the validators
This is where the three really diverge.
- Lido uses a curated set of professional node operators voted in by the Lido DAO. Big and battle-tested, but the pool controls a large share of all staked ETH, which some see as a decentralization concern.
- Rocket Pool lets almost anyone run a node by putting up ETH plus a Rocket Pool token bond. That spreads validators across a wider crowd but adds smart-contract complexity.
- Coinbase runs the validators itself. Simple, single-throat-to-choke, but you're trusting one U.S.-regulated company with the whole stack.
None of these designs are automatically better. They're trade-offs between decentralization, simplicity and counterparty risk. If you've never thought hard about how liquid staking differs from regular staking, that's worth a read first.
Real risks with each choice
Every liquid staking token can trade below the value of the ETH behind it. That's called a depeg, and it hit stETH in mid-2022 when it slipped several percent under ETH for weeks. Rocket Pool and Coinbase tokens can wobble the same way. On top of that:
- Smart-contract bugs can drain deposits from Lido or Rocket Pool. Audits reduce that risk without removing it.
- Validator slashing — the penalty for downtime or misbehavior — cuts everyone's rewards a little.
- Coinbase carries plain company risk: an exchange failure or a regulator freeze would hit cbETH holders directly.
Our page on the real risks of staking walks through each of these in more detail.
Picking the token that fits you
A rough way to think about it:
- If you already use Coinbase and just want the simple version, cbETH is the least new-account, least new-wallet path — at the cost of the highest fee and single-issuer risk.
- If you want the deepest DeFi liquidity and lowest headline fee, stETH (or wstETH) is the default. You accept concentration concerns around Lido.
- If you care most about spreading validators across many operators, rETH is the more decentralized bet. You accept a smaller ecosystem and slightly higher net fees.
None of this is a recommendation. Nothing about liquid staking guarantees a return, and the underlying ETH price can fall further than any rewards you earn. Try the staking rewards calculator to see roughly what different rates work out to in your case.
Picking the right liquid staking token in practice
Choosing between stETH, rETH and cbETH is less about who has the flashiest yield and more about which trade-off you're comfortable with. Read each protocol's docs, check who runs the validators, and never put more into any single one than you can afford to see marked down for a while. That last part is not paranoia — it's how liquid staking has actually behaved during rough weeks.