Despite the ongoing crypto winter, Lido Finance, a liquid staking protocol has seen good growth beyond expectations following Ethereum’s merger Last year. The protocol has emerged as the largest Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol with the highest Total Value locked (TVL), pushing off other competitors.
According to data from DeFiLlama, Lido Finance now has a TVL of $5.9 billion, which happens to be the highest. In comparison to Lido Finance, the data also revealed other DeFi protocol’s TVL. Amongst others, MakerDAO has $5.89 billion, AAVE has $3.71 billion, Curve has $3.71 billion, and Uniswap has $3.28 billion.
Why the Growth?
Despite the continuous fluctuation in the DeFi market, the protocol has drastically cut short the use of energy in its network in order to attract more investors and contribute immensely to the growth of the market.
Majorly, the increased interest in Lido amongst other DeFi firms is also a result of Ethereum’s merger last year. The merge brought about an increase in the staking of ETH following the upgrade to a proof-of-stake mechanism. Most Ethereum holders stayed put on staking as it allowed them to get lots of benefits given by LDO.
Interestingly, Lido’s staking style affords users to stake ETH without necessarily following the traditional minimum 32 ETH that’s allowed to be staked. Compared to other DeFi staking platforms, Lido’s staking style brought about a spontaneous increase in the number of people willing to stake ETH on the Lido platform.
Additionally, Dune analytics data reveals that Lido, which specializes in providing staking services, controls the market about 29% ahead of other competitors. An earlier tweet from Lido also shows that its TVL performance was also influenced by the increased staking deposits across all chains except Kusama.
Generally, TVL is one of the major metrics used for performance and the market conditions of the DeFi sector. Therefore, the increased competition in the space as revealed by the data is a testament to the rapid development of the sector regardless of prevailing market conditions.
