Lido DAO

Lido DAO is a decentralized finance application that offers liquid staking, primarily on Ethereum, allowing token holders to stake assets and receive a tradeable receipt token in return rather than having their assets locked up during the staking period. The problem it addresses is the illiquidity that ordinarily comes with proof-of-stake staking, where deposited funds cannot be used elsewhere until unstaked. It is designed for anyone who wants to participate in staking rewards while retaining the ability to use a liquid representation of their staked position across other DeFi protocols.

When a user deposits a supported asset such as Ether into Lido, the protocol stakes that asset on their behalf through a network of node operators and issues a corresponding liquid staking token that accrues rewards over time. The LDO token is a governance token that lives on Ethereum and across several other ecosystems including Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon, giving holders the ability to vote on protocol parameters and decisions made by the Lido DAO. LDO does not itself represent a staked position; it represents a governance stake in the organization that controls the protocol.

Lido charges a take rate of approximately 6.21 percent of staking rewards generated, measured over the trailing 30 days, and that fee is split between node operators, the DAO treasury, and, to a smaller degree, LDO holders. Over the trailing 30 days, the protocol collected fees of 37,012,522 dollars in total, of which 2,298,034 dollars was recognized as protocol revenue and 775,187 dollars was distributed to holders, with the remaining 34,714,488 dollars flowing to the supply side, meaning the node operators and stakers. Fees annualized from the trailing 30-day period stand at 450,319,017.67 dollars, and fee growth over the most recent 30-day period was 35.45 percent, matching revenue growth over the same window.