DeFi
Lido Finance reaches 1 million validators and fuels DeFi growth
In an April 29 announcement, Lido Finance, the leading liquid staking protocol on Ethereum, reached a major milestone, reaching one million validators.
Lido Finance makes staking easy for regular users with a lot of capital. Normally, a user needs 32 Ether (ETH), worth around $3,178 to run their validator nodes on Ethereum, but with Lido Finance, users with limited funds can also participate.
Currently, Lido Finance covers 28.5% of all Ether staked, while an additional 13.6% is staked through Coinbase. In total, more than 27% of all Ether is currently staked.
The rise of liquid staking protocols like Lido has been remarkable. They provide users with liquidity benefits that traditional staking does not offer. When one stakes their Ether with Lido, they receive in return stETH (Lido Staked ETH), which they can use elsewhere in DeFi protocols, as in traditional staking, the user’s tokens would be locked and unusable .
Total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols has seen a massive increase from a low of $36 billion in late 2023 to a high of $97 billion in early 2024, and currently stands at $92.32 billion of dollars.
According to Messari, the growth of DeFi TVL, up 65.6% quarter-over-quarter, is mainly due to rising asset prices and the popularity of liquid restocking, especially with the growth of nearly of 71% of the TVL of Ethereum.
In total, liquid staking protocols have locked up over $47.7 billion in value, with Lido alone accounting for $29.9 billion. Rocket Pool comes in second with $3.86 billion. This makes liquid staking the largest category in DeFi, with combined TVL across 164 protocols reaching $47.6 billion.
Read also: JPMorgan predicts Ethereum will escape ‘security’ label amid Lido decline