Ethereum staking platform Lido has announced the completion of a token sale that has netted it $73 million from some of the biggest names in venture capital.
According to the token sale proposal, 30 million LIDO tokens were sold in two batches. This sale fetched a total of 6,480 ETH, or $22 million. It added that this sale was an extension of a recent LDO Treasury Diversification proposal centered on Paradigm.
The current 3% of the supply sold as a part of the 10% of the previous proposal, in which Paradigm purchased 21,600 ETH, or $51 million, worth.
Many of the big names in DeFi investment participated in the second round, including Three Arrows Capital, DeFiance Capital, Jump Trading, Alameda Research, iFinex, Dragonfly Capital, Delphi Digital, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, and The LAO.
Liquid ETH 2.0 Staking
Lido is a “liquid” staking solution for ETH 2.0 which has been backed by industry-leading staking providers. The protocol allows users to stake ETH without locking assets or maintaining any hardware infrastructure. Assets can also be used on-chain for other yield-generating opportunities in DeFi, and there is no lock-up period or minimum balance. The protocol takes a 10% cut of any staking rewards as a fee for services.
The protocol issues stETH tokens equivalent to the amount staked, which can be deposited elsewhere for additional yields. Binance does something similar by issuing BETH tokens for those staked, but the principle ETH must remain in the deposit contract for the duration.
Lido has its own governance token, LDO, 10% of which have just been sold to early investors in the funding round. The protocol plans to use the latest capital injection to facilitate the integration of stETH across Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem, in addition to other proof-of-stake blockchains, such as Solana and Terra.
At the time of writing, there was 282,227 ETH staked on the platform, generating an APY of 6.2%. According to the ETH 2.0 Launchpad, there is currently 4.3 million ETH (worth $14.7 billion) staked on the Beacon Chain, generating 7.5% APY.
LDO is currently trading at $4.12, with a market cap of $464,116,855 and a 24-hour trading volume of $12,245,556.
Lido Launches on Solana
In an announcement on May 6, staking solutions provider Chorus One stated that Lido was coming to Solana using its custom-built service.
We also published an article on our proposed design for stSOL (staked $SOL) and why it is needed, check that out here:https://t.co/IwmecAFpdw
— Chorus One (@ChorusOne) May 6, 2021
Users staking their SOL tokens with Lido will be issued an on-chain representation of the SOL staking position with Lido validators, called stSOL. As with stETH, the token can be used for other yield generation incentives in DeFi.
