Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH Liquid Staking

cbETH is Coinbase's liquid staking token, representing ETH staked through Coinbase's infrastructure plus accrued rewards. It is a reward-bearing ERC-20: your balance stays constant while its exchange rate against ETH rises as staking rewards accumulate, so you can hold, trade or use it in DeFi without unstaking. Staking Rewards tracks two separate figures for it — the conversion rate Coinbase redeems at, and the market rate it trades at — and the gap between them is the peg accuracy shown on this page.

cbETH's current APY, shown at the top of this page, is net of Coinbase's 25% commission — the highest fee among the major ETH liquid staking tokens Staking Rewards tracks, against 10% for both Lido and ether.fi. The underlying rate is measured on ETHSRB, the Ethereum benchmark we publish: consensus-layer earnings plus execution-layer tips and MEV, divided by total staked ETH, over a 24-hour window and annualized without compounding. Coinbase's floating conversion rate reflects those rewards net of the commission and any validator penalties, so value accrual is automatic and needs no claiming. The fee's real cost is easier to see in the realized 365-day return on this page than in the headline rate, because a commission gap compounds while a rate difference looks small.

cbETH's distinguishing feature is its issuer: a regulated, publicly traded company, which suits compliance-focused holders but concentrates custody risk in one entity. Its 25% commission is well above Lido's 10%, and stETH/wstETH carry deeper DeFi liquidity — which is why cbETH's peg tends to move further from its conversion rate under sell pressure than the larger tokens do. Rocket Pool's rETH is the more decentralized alternative. The comparison worth making is on realized 365-day return rather than on advertised APY, because that is where the fee difference actually shows up.

The primary risk is Coinbase counterparty and custody exposure — regulatory, operational and security. Beyond that: validator slashing reflected in the conversion rate, wrapper smart-contract risk, a possible secondary-market discount to the conversion rate during heavy sell pressure, and a commission Coinbase sets unilaterally. The discount risk is the one you can monitor rather than assume: this page tracks cbETH's peg accuracy continuously, and because cbETH's DeFi liquidity is thinner than stETH's, that figure moves earlier and further here than on the larger tokens. Reward stability over 90 and 365 days shows whether the post-commission rate has actually held.

Unwrap cbETH through Coinbase to staked ETH and follow Ethereum's exit and withdrawal process, or trade cbETH on centralized and decentralized exchanges for immediate liquidity. Which is cheaper depends on the peg accuracy Staking Rewards tracks on this page — the gap between what cbETH trades at and what Coinbase will convert it for. Because cbETH's secondary liquidity is thinner than stETH's, market exits can clear at a discount when sell pressure is high, and the unwrap route is usually the cheaper one for size.