In approximately three days, Ethereum is expected to transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain network to a proof-of-stake (PoS) version via The Merge. Ahead of the transition, liquid staking project Lido saw a lot more activity this week as the value locked in the protocol rose more than 13 percent. Furthermore, the project’s Lido Dao management token has gained 25.4% against the US dollar in the last seven days.
Lido TVL is up 13% this week, with Project Stacked Ether representing more than 30% of Staked Ethereum.
Last week, Bitcoin.com news of the decentralized finance (defi) project Lido reported that the project began to see a lot of interest ahead of its merger. Lido Finance is a liquid staking project that allows people to pool their crypto assets to collect huge profits, but the process also allows the owners to hold the assets in a non-custodial way and trade them as well.
Lido provides liquid solutions for blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Polkadot and Kusama. However, most of the value locked in Lido comes from locked Ether, as ETH represents $7.61 billion of Lido’s $7.81 billion total value locked (TVL).
In the last seven days, metrics from defillama.com indicate that Lido’s TVL swelled by 13.08%, and TVL increased by 2.43% in the last 24 hours. While Macardao is the largest Defi protocol today, according to TVL statistics, Lido is the second largest Defi protocol on September 11th.
The Ether locked in Lido’s application alone represents 12.60% of the $60.38 billion TVL Diff today. Lido’s wrapped ether derivative token, STETH, is the 13th largest market capitalization out of 12,907 tokens valued at $1.1 trillion. Lido management token lido dao (LDO) has increased 25.4% in the last two weeks.
Three major exchanges and 8 Ethereum 2.0 pools
Data from Dune Analytics shows that Lido is the largest Beacon chain depositor with 30.3% of Lido Financial’s deposits. Coinbase commands 14.5% of Beacon chain deposits, followed by Lido and Kraken 8.3%.
Coinbase recently launched a liquid staking token called coinbase wrapped ethereum (CBETH) and in mid-August JPMorgan market analyst said Coinbase could be a material beneficiary of the Ethereum integration transition. At the time of publication, there are 13,638,351 Ether and 426,198 validators locked in the ETH 2.0 contract. 30.49% of the 13.6 million ETH stake was paid by Lido Finance.
In addition to giant exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance, Lido competes with Stkr, Sharedstake, Stafi, Stakewise, Cream, Stakehound, and Rocketpool. Between Lido, Rocketpool, StackHound, StackWise, Staffy, ShareStack, and StackR, there is approximately $8.11 billion in value.
While Lido holds a 30.49% stake in ETH, the aforementioned ETH 2.0 pools represent 33.11% of the Ether held today. Today there are 4,585,038 Ether locked between the eight ETH 2.0 pools.
What do you think about the latest Lido Finance action and the amount of Ether Eight Pools? Let us know what you think about this in the comments section below.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons
DisclaimerThis article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal or accounting advice. Neither the Company nor the Author shall be liable, directly or indirectly, for any damages or losses arising out of the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services referred to in this paragraph.