Buy & Swap Lido DAO (LDO)

What Lido says it is

Lido's documentation introduces the protocol as a liquid staking system: users stake ETH through the protocol and receive stETH, a token representing their staked position that remains usable across decentralised finance while the underlying ETH earns staking rewards. The site lists an ecosystem of integrations — wallets, exchanges, lending markets and liquidity pools — where stETH can be used.

The site emphasises three properties: the protocol is non-custodial, meaning its design ensures no one can access or control stakers' funds; it is governed by the Lido DAO; and key decisions require public votes by LDO token holders.^{[1], [2], [3], [4]}

How it works

Under the hood, the protocol routes staked ETH to a set of node operators who run the actual validators. The site describes multiple staking modules — including a Community Staking Module and a Curated Module — and notes that because of the permissionless nature of one module, the number of node operator entries does not represent unique operators. The documentation covers the deployed contracts, multisigs, audits and a public risk disclosure.

Governance runs through the Lido DAO: the site lists a research forum, off-chain votes, on-chain votes and LEGO grants, plus a decentralisation scorecard tracking how the protocol performs on resilience measures. The documentation also covers Lido Improvement Proposals, the process by which changes to the protocol are proposed and decided.

For builders, the documentation provides an integration guide, an stVaults SDK and references to the smart contracts, and the site points node operators to a dedicated portal with protocol stats and metrics. This breadth of documentation reflects the protocol's position as infrastructure that many other applications build on.^{[5], [6], [7], [8]}

What LDO is used for

LDO is the governance token of the Lido DAO. The site states that key decisions require public votes by LDO token holders, and the documentation describes the Lido tokens and governance stack. LDO does not entitle holders to staking rewards — those flow to stETH holders — so its role is control over the protocol's direction rather than a claim on its cash flows.

That distinction matters: holding LDO is a position on the value of governing the largest liquid staking protocol, not on staking yield directly.^{[4], [9]}

Risks and open questions

Lido's own site carries a public risk disclosure and explicit caveats: APR figures are estimates, not guaranteed, rewards fluctuate with network conditions and validator performance, and past performance does not guarantee future results. Staking through any protocol adds smart-contract and operator risk on top of the underlying network's risks.

Lido's scale is itself a debated topic in the Ethereum community: a single staking protocol controlling a large share of staked ETH raises questions about network-level concentration, which the protocol's decentralisation scorecard is designed to address but not eliminate.

What the official sources do not say

UNKNOWN from official sources: the current precise share of all staked ETH running through Lido at the time of reading, the distribution of LDO voting power across holders, and the outcome of ongoing governance debates.

It is not predicted here.