Ethereum will transition in three days from a proof of work (PoW), blockchain network, to a proof of stake (PoS), via The Merge. Ahead of the transition, the liquid staking project Lido has seen a lot more activity as the value locked in the protocol increased by more than 13% this week. Moreover, the project’s lido dao governance token has increased 25.4% against the U.S. dollar during the past seven days.
Lido TVL Jumps 13% Higher This Week, Project’s Wrapped Ether Represents More Than 30% of Staked Ethereum
Last week, Bitcoin.com News reported on the decentralized finance (defi) project Lido as the project started seeing more demand ahead of The Merge. Lido Finance is a liquid staking project that allows people to wrap their crypto assets in order to gather a staking yield, but the process also allows owners to hold the assets in a non-custodial fashion and be able to trade them as well.
Lido provides liquid staking options for blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana and Polygon. However, most of the value locked in Lido derives from locked ether, as ETH represents $7. 61 billion of Lido’s $7. 81 billion total value locked (TVL).

During the past seven days, metrics from defillama.com indicates that Lido’s TVL swelled by 13. 08%, and the TVL has risen by 2. 43% during the past 24 hours. While Makerdao is the largest defi protocol today, in terms of TVL stats, Lido is the second largest defi protocol on September 11.
The ether locked in Lido’s application alone represents 12. 60% of the $60. 38 billion TVL in defi today. Lido’s wrapped ether derivative token, STETH, is the 13th largest market capitalization out of the 12,907 tokens worth $1.1 trillion. Lido’s governance token lido dao (LDO) has increased 25.4% during the past two weeks.
Three Largest Exchanges and 8 Ethereum 2.0 pools
Data from Dune Analytics shows Lido is the largest Beacon chain depositor with 30.3% of the deposits stemming from Lido Finance. Coinbase is second to Lido with 14.5% of the Beacon chain deposits and Kraken commands 8.3%.
Coinbase recently launched a liquid staking token called coinbase wrapped ethereum (CBETH), and in mid-August a JPMorgan market analyst said Coinbase could be a material beneficiary of Ethereum’s Merge transition. At press time, there’s 13,638,351 ether locked into the ETH 2.0 contract and there are 426,198 validators. 30. 49% of the 13.6 million ETH staked is staked via Lido Finance.

Lido competes against Stkr and other large exchanges such as Kraken and Binance. There are approximately $8 between Lido and Rocketpool, Stakehounds, Stakewisestakewisestakewisestaketake, Stafi and Sharedstake. 11 billion in value.
While Lido commands 30. 49% of the ETH staked, the aforementioned ETH 2.0 pools represent 33. 11% of the staked ether today. There is 4,585,038 locked ether held between the eight ETH 2.0 pools today.
This story contains tags
13 million ether, Binance, CBETH, Coinbase, coinbase wrapped ether, ETH 2.0, ETH 2.0 Contract, ETH liquid staking, ETH staked, Kraken, LDO, Lido, Lido Finance, Lido wrapped ether, Liquid Staking, liquid staking ETH, Rocketpool, Sharedstake, Stafi, Staked ETH, Stakehound, Stakewise, staking, STETH, Stkr, Validators
What do you think about the recent Lido Finance action and the amount of ether eight pools have held? Please comment below to let us know your thoughts on this topic.
Jamie Redman
Jamie Redman, the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News, is a Florida-based financial journalist. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. Redman is passionate about Bitcoin, open-source codes, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.
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