Lido DAO

Lido is a liquid staking protocol that lets users stake ETH without running their own validators. In return for staked ETH, users receive stETH; this token reflects staking rewards and can be used as collateral or a medium of exchange in decentralized finance applications. LDO, meanwhile, is the governance token of Lido DAO, issued on Ethereum.

Deposited ETH is distributed between professional node operators approved by the DAO and operators joining through permissionless modules. The protocol takes a service fee from the rewards earned, and this fee is split between the operators and the DAO treasury. LDO holders vote on operator sets, fee parameters, protocol upgrades and treasury spending. A dual governance structure added later gives stETH holders the ability to object to DAO decisions that could adversely affect them and to stop those decisions from taking effect.

The LDO price may be linked to the amount of ETH deposited with Lido, Ethereum staking yields, the protocol's fee income, competing liquid staking and restaking services and regulatory approaches toward staking services. On the Lido DAO page of Lzzo.com, the LDO price comes from the LDO/USDT pair on Binance; the value is converted into dollars at the Coinbase Exchange USDT/USD rate and the chart follows this series.