Protocol for liquid staking Lido Finance appears to have benefited the most from the September Ethereum merge, with its total value locked (TVL) now ranking first along with several other decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
In comparison to MakerDAO’s $5.89 billion and AAVE’s $3.7 billion in TVL, Lido’s liquid staking protocol currently commands $5.9 billion in TVL, according to data from DeFiLlama.
Lido reigns in TVL
As of January 2, $5.8 billion worth of ether was staked, according to its website. Around $23.2 million was bet on Solana, $43.9 million on Polygon MATIC, $11 million on Polkadot, and $2.2 million on Kusama at the same time.
Users can access liquid Ether staking with Lido’s model without committing to the customary 32 ETH minimum.
Since Ethereum switched to proof-of-stake, staking solutions like these have been in high demand, according to blockchain data analytics from Nansen in December.
The Merge’s introduction of staked ETH as a yield-bearing instrument that is completely native to cryptocurrencies was highlighted in its report, and it has since outperformed other collateralized yield-bearing services.
Due to the fact that Lido sends received ether to the staking protocol, its fee revenue has been directly proportional to Ethereum Proof-of-stake (PoS) earnings.
In November 2022, Lido claimed that since October 2022, it has been bringing in $1 million per day in fees.
According to a Messari statement in September 2022, the MakerDAO, which oversees the Maker protocol, saw its revenue fall to just over $4 million in Q3, an 86% decrease from the previous quarter. The decline was attributed to a lack of liquidations and weak loan demand.
According to Nansen in September, Lido held 31% of the ETH that was staked among DeFi during that same month, which is a significant amount when compared to major cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Kraken, which each held 15% and 8.5%.