The brief

Analyst view

• Lido holds ~9.8M ETH staked (23% of all staked Ethereum), making it the largest liquid staking provider.
• Lido v3 with modular stVaults launched on mainnet 30 Jan 2026 for operator customization.
• Governed by LDO token holders via Aragon DAO; operating since 2020 without major security incidents.

Technical approach

As reported

Liquid Staking

stETH as ERC-20 wrapper

Users deposit ETH for stETH, a token that accrues rewards in real-time, tradeable in DeFi.

Node Operators

Decentralized validator set

Lido coordinates with independent node operators who run Ethereum validators on behalf of stakers, taking a commission fee.

DAO Governance

LDO token and Aragon DAO

Lido is governed by LDO token holders who vote on protocol changes, operator selection, and fee levels through an Aragon DAO.

Modular Architecture (v3)

stVaults for custom setups

v3 introduces stVaults, allowing operators to run specialized stake configurations tailored to specific strategies or use cases.

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