Staking · Liquid Staking · stETH
Lido lets users stake ETH and receive stETH, a rebasing liquid staking token that accrues daily staking rewards while staying usable across DeFi.
The largest Ethereum liquid staking protocol.
stETH price
$0.4336
-2.8% 24h
Latest data · 15 min delay
stETH is not hard-pegged and can trade below ETH on secondary markets during stress. In June 2022, cascading selling by Celsius and Three Arrows Capital plus the Terra collapse pushed stETH to a multi-percent discount to ETH in the Curve pool before native withdrawals existed.
Lido's very large share of Ethereum staking concentrates influence in LDO governance and its operator set, raising concerns about single-protocol control of validation. The Dual Governance system (live June 2025) was introduced specifically so stETH holders can veto or rage-quit DAO decisions they view as harmful.
Because Lido delegates to a set of professional node operators and DVT clusters, validator slashing or extended downtime is passed through to stETH holders. Lido reports negligible historical slashing, but a large correlated slashing or client-bug event across operators would directly reduce stETH's backing.
stETH rebases and the withdrawal accounting depend on the Lido oracle reporting beacon-chain balances. A compromised, buggy, or manipulated oracle report could misstate rewards or the stETH:ETH exchange rate, which is why the oracle has been repeatedly re-audited (e.g., Oracle v7.1 in 2026).
The protocol comprises complex, upgradeable contracts (Staking Router, withdrawal queue, Dual Governance, stVaults). Despite 90+ audits, high-severity findings have surfaced in reviews (e.g., critical/high issues flagged and fixed during Lido V3 audits in late 2025), so residual smart-contract risk remains.
