Ankr (ankrETH) Review

ankrETH is Ankr's liquid staking token for Ethereum: you deposit ETH, Ankr runs the validators, and the token rises in ETH value as rewards accrue. In the liquid staking ranking it scores 5.8 out of 10 on five equally weighted criteria, checked against Ankr's own documentation and the token contract on 1 November 2026. The score is carried by a published fee and a priced instant exit; it is held back by an operator set that is Ankr alone and by contract code with no licence.

How Ankr scores in liquid staking

Each criterion is marked 0 to 10 and carries the same 20% weight. The basis is desk research of primary sources, not a test deposit.

The arithmetic: (8 + 9 + 3 + 2 + 7) / 5 = 29 / 5 = 5.8. All five marks are unchanged from the previous check on 24 July 2026: the re-check found the same fee, exit terms and audit list, and nothing that would move the operator or licence marks.

Strongest criteria: the exit and the fee

Exit & redemption (9). Ankr publishes both the option to leave fast and its exact price. On 10 ETH, a flash unstake costs 0.05 ETH plus gas; the standard route costs no service fee but waits on the network's exit queue. The unstaking guide also says what happens when the flash pool is too small: the interface switches to the standard route. The rubric places a stated queue and a stated fee above vague withdrawal language. This is the highest exit mark in the category, shared with Jito and Puffer. It stops short of 10 because instant capacity depends on the pool and no size for it is published.

Commission clarity (8). A single figure, 10% of rewards, is stated in the FAQ. It is easy to apply: of 1 ETH in rewards, 0.1 ETH goes to Ankr and 0.9 ETH shows up in the exchange ratio. Stader, which scores 9 here, goes one step further by splitting its cut between protocol and node operators. Ankr does not, which is the reason for the missing point. For how a fee like this, exit costs and slashing reduce a headline rate, see our guide to staking returns after costs.

Weakest criteria: deficiencies, not gaps in the check

Operator decentralisation (3). This is a measured finding, not missing data. The liquid staking mechanics page says Ankr creates a new validator whenever 32 ETH accumulates and lists about 1,700 validators. The FAQ says Ankr delegates only to validators it considers trustworthy and reputable, without naming any. So the operator set is one company, with entry closed to outsiders. Ankr does describe its key handling: signing keys sit in hardware security modules built with Cubist. That is a security control, not a wider operator base, so it does not raise this mark.

Licence & code openness (2). The rubric reads the licence file on the contract repository. Ankr's public GitHub organization has no ankrETH contracts repository; its staking-related repositories are archived and date from 2020 and 2021. On Etherscan, the token is an upgradeable proxy (EIP-1967) whose proxy source carries MIT. The implementation contract behind it, AETH_R21, is verified as an exact match but shows no licence. Anyone can read the code, but no licence grants rights to reuse it. The mark matches Swell's 2 for a missing licence file. Ankr's documentation also does not say who holds the proxy admin role or whether upgrades pass through a timelock.

Audit disclosure (7). This mark is above the middle but is still the next gap. The reports are linked and the firms are named, which meets the category's definition of disclosure. Stader, Origin and Mantle score 9 with reports from three or more firms. Ankr lists two firms and nothing after May 2023.

What the score does not cover

• Yield. The rubric does not mark the reward rate. On 1 November 2026 the contract's ratio implied about 1.2435 ETH per ankrETH, which records past accrual, not a forecast.
• Market liquidity. ankrETH can also be sold on decentralized exchanges, where the price can differ from the redemption ratio. That was not measured.
• Incident history. Ankr's after-action report describes a December 2022 exploit of its BNB staking token, aBNBc, through a compromised developer key. The report does not say ankrETH was affected, and no criterion scores incidents.
• Restaking. Depositing ankrETH into EigenLayer adds that protocol's risks. Those are assessed in the separate liquid restaking ranking, not here.

Ankr vs Frax Ether and Liquid Collective

On the 1 November 2026 marks in the liquid staking ranking, after same-day re-checks raised Bedrock, Frax Ether and Jito, Ankr is listed ninth of ten. The two entries just above it show where its points come from.

Frax Ether leads Ankr by 0.4. Ankr's priced instant exit is three points better than Frax's queue-only route, but Frax gains three on licence and one each on commission and audits. Liquid Collective leads Ankr by 0.8. Ankr's exit is three points better, but Liquid Collective gains three on operators, two on licence and two on audits. Bedrock, now 6.6, gained eight points on licence in its own re-check; on exit it remains three points behind Ankr. Peer entries are re-checked on their own schedules, so these gaps hold for the check date.

Who this rating suits

The score is most useful to an ETH holder who wants to know in advance what it costs to leave. Ankr publishes that price, and few products in the category do as well. It is less suited to someone who wants validator operation spread across independent operators or contract code under an open licence. On those two criteria Ankr is among the lowest scorers in the ranking. The rating describes published terms on one date; it is not a recommendation to stake, and it does not assess whether ankrETH suits any individual's finances.