Lido community Votes to Integrate Axelar and Wormhole for Staked ETH Bridge to BNB Chain

• Lido expands beyond Ethereum: stETH to bridge $23B in value to BNB Chain via Axelar and Wormhole.
• Lido’s dominance grows: stETH integration with BNB Chain set to boost flexibility and liquidity.
• Lido Institutional launches amid SEC scrutiny, enhancing enterprise-level staking for large investors.

The Lido community decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) has voted to integrate the Axelar and Wormhole protocols as the official bridges for transferring Lido Staked ETH (stETH) to the BNB Chain. This is an essential step for Lido, as it will be its first connection to a Layer 1 blockchain outside the Ethereum ecosystem. This integration is expected to pave the way for $23 billion of total value locked (TVL) to be moved into the BNB Chain, the world’s highest blockchain by TVL.

Lido DAO just voted to adopt the NTT open token standard for industry #1 TVL $25B wstETH.

wstETH will adopt NTT as its standard for wstETH to @BNBChain and as the canonical bridge. The industry-first joint solution uses both @wormhole & @axelar for verification and security 🧵 pic.twitter.com/ZIXQB9djOE

— Dan Reecer (@danreecer_) August 9, 2024

Lido’s Dominance in the Ether Staking Market

Lido is set to integrate Axelar and Wormhole, marking its first operation outside its Ethereum ecosystem. Lido leads the Ethereum staking market, although it experienced a slight drop in net Ether deposits this year. Its success is attributed to its one million validators in April 2024, contributing to the resurgence of DeFi and making staking the first and most influential sector within DeFi. Lido’s market positioning is expected to be more robust when stETH is released on the BNB Chain, providing more flexibility and liquidity for users. This is a strategic move with BNB Chain integration, as large user harnessing and influence span multiple blockchain ecosystems.

Lido’s expansion of interaction with the BNB Chain, one of TVL’s top five blockchains, demonstrates its commitment to increasing stETH accessibility across different blockchains, enhancing its staking market leadership, and offering improved asset management options.

Growth of Liquid Staking and DeFi Ecosystem

Liquid staking protocols are gaining popularity in DeFi because they enable returns on staked assets without long lockdown periods, unlike traditional staking models that require long-term access to digital assets for trading or movement.

Lido is an example in which users deposit Ether (ETH) into the protocol and get stETH tokens back. These tokens grow over time with interest, being tradable or redeemable at an approximate 1-to-1 ratio with underlying ETH. There is a lot of flexibility; therefore, liquid staking has been one of the main boosters for increased growth in the DeFi ecosystem.

According to DefiLlama, the present DeFi TVL is $83.4 billion, with $25.94 billion attributed to Lido’s liquid staking. This firmly positions Lido as the most significant DeFi protocol by a large margin over its nearest competitor, EigenLayer, which has a total of $12.694 billion in TVL. This has largely enabled TVL in DeFi to surge toward nearly $100 billion in value in the first quarter of 2024.

Lido Institutional and Regulatory Challenges

The emergence of Lido Institutional is the next step in expanding the line of staking solutions intended for large institutional clients, including custodians, asset managers, and exchanges. The effort aims to provide enterprise-level staking services with the needed liquidity and security for sophisticated institutional strategies. But not all has been smooth with Lido’s rapid growth. 

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has also accused Lido and Rocket Pool of selling unregistered securities, complicating the liquid staking sector. Still, no direct measures have been taken against them to date.

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