Lido Finance is one of the largest Merge staking providers. It launched two layer-2 networks, Arbitrum and Optimism. This move, it claims, further increases accessibility to Ethereum stakes and reduces gas fees. Lido holds around 40% of the staked ETH on Beacon Chain.
In July, the team revealed the plan to expand L2 when it acknowledged that many layer-2 networks had “demonstrated economic activity.” The new deployment to L2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism was launched on October 7.
Lido allows for liquid staking. This gives stakers more flexibility as they can withdraw funds at any moment, as opposed to directly stake Ethereum and locking it up.
Coinbase Chief Financial Officer Alesia Háas has previously stated that institutional Staking won’t take off until the problem of asset lockup is solved. Lido is a flexible and liquid option for staking, which is why it’s grown in popularity.
The first phase of the layer-2 rollout allows the bridging of Lido’s Wrapped Staked Ethereum (WSTEH), token between the two networks.
stETH, the Ethereum liquid staking token Lido issues in proportion with Staked ETH. The wrapped version of stETH keeps a fixed balance for use in Decentralized Finance (DeFi), applications that need a constant balance.
Lido will also be allocating 150,000 Lido DAO tokens (LDO) in rewards each month starting on the launch date for wstETH-bridged across all networks. This initiative will build liquidity in wstETH for farming incentives on DeFi partners such as Balancer, Curve, and Kyber Network.
You can easily connect staked ETH to Layer 2 protocols with a click, and enjoy lower gas fees as well as exciting DeFi opportunities.
According to Lido’s website, Lido holds \$7.4 billion in staked Ethereum. This is roughly 40% of total staked. It was also reported that stETH lost its peg earlier this year due to crypto contagion. However, recovery was quick.
It has a market share of 80% between the layer-2 networks it chose to deploy first.
Arbitrum leads the market with a 51% share and $2.42 Billion in total value locked (TVL), while Optimism holds a 30% share, and a $1.45 Billion TVL, per to HTML2beat.
