August 16th, liquidity provider Lido Finance announced that it will fund ZK technology developer Nil Foundation through Lido Grant to establish zkOracle, providing trust-minimized soundness checks for Lido's accounting reports, ensuring the liquidity of Lido Finance.

The amount of ETH staked through liquid staking platforms has been steadily increasing since the beginning of 2023, with liquid staking now holding 36% of the total ETH staking market share. Despite the drop in ETH's value by over 60% from its peak in 2022, the demand for staking has continued to rise, particularly due to the much-awaited Shapella upgrade and the addition of a withdrawal feature. Liquid staking protocols have emerged as the dominant option, with Lido Finance being the largest DeFi protocol with a TVL of $14.76 billion and its native token, LDO, experiencing a 7.45% gain in the last 30 days.

Lido Finance, a leading liquid staking protocol, has now cross-integrated with BitKeep, offering users streamlined access to its services from their BitKeep Wallet. Users can easily stake their ETH via their BitKeep Wallet to earn rewards. This integration will enable users to connect to Lido Finance either via the BitKeep browser extension wallet or by searching for and accessing the Lido protocol from the DApp browser within their BitKeep Wallet mobile app. At the same time, the BitKeep team has also announced the impending launch of its own staking service, integrating protocols such as Lido Finance and Rocket Pool to support ETH2.0 staking. This will allow users to enjoy a more streamlined staking experience, and also easily monitor their earnings in real-time.

According to data by on-chain analysis firm Glassnode, Lido Finance [LDO] remained head and shoulders above its competitors in the expanding liquid staking landscape. The supply of its liquid staking token (LST), Lido Staked ETH [stETH] was nearly 16 times more than the closest rival, RocketPool’s rETH. While Lido’s domination remained unrivalled, other players have slowly enhanced their game.

July 4 (Cointime) - According to a report by blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode, Ethereum staking has seen a surge in deposits since the Shanghai upgrade, with Lido Finance maintaining its dominant position in the network's staking pools.

July 3 (Cointime) - Lido Finance has executed proposal 161, staking all 20,300 ETH in the treasury to stETH, according to a tweet by Tom Wan. The breakdown of the treasury shows that 20.7% of the value is in stETH, worth $63 million, while 75.7% of the value is in LDO, worth $231 million. This means that Lido's assets are now valued at $304.7 million (including LDO) and $72.5 million (excluding LDO). Lido has now become the 13th largest holder with 33,000 stETH.

June 23 (Cointime) - Seraphim Czecker, a DeFi expansionist at Lido Finance, has proposed that Mantle, a notable Layer 2 project, allocate 40,000 ether ($72 million) to Lido's liquid staking platform. Mantle, which recently merged with BitDAO, has a large community treasury of $500 million worth of ether and $300 million in stablecoins.

Ethereum and Lido Finance have been generating significant revenue in the past 30 days, with Ethereum surpassing $1 billion in cumulative revenue over the last 180 days. Lido Finance has also performed well, ranking third and fifth in revenue for the past 30 and 180 days, respectively.

Lido Finance's LDO liquid staking protocol has successfully processed almost all withdrawal requests within a week since the launch of its version 2. The withdrawals were facilitated using Lido's ETH buffer, which still has a supply of 37.4k available. The buffer is funded through execution layer rewards, partial withdrawals, and daily ETH deposits made by new stakers via Lido. Lido's TVL has increased by 10% in the last month, and its total value locked now stands at $12.5 billion, which is almost double the second-ranked MakerDAO. This demonstrates the growing popularity and success of Lido Finance's protocol.

According to data from IntoTheBlock, despite a decrease in the number of large holders and an increase in whale transactions, crypto whales still hold 87% of the supply of Lido Finance (LDO). This suggests that large holders consider LDO undervalued, as more holders were in loss compared to those in gains. The increased transactions by whales may have been influenced by the liquid staking project's contribution to the activity on the Ethereum blockchain and Lido's introduction of its V2 with additional upgrades. On-chain data showed that most holders with 0 to 100 tokens joined whales in the accumulation hunt, indicating a high belief in the LDO token relative to others. However, the 10 to 100 group resisted intense load-up. LDO's price at press time had reduced by 1.83% in the last 24 hours.