• Data from Dune suggests that 28.5% of staked Ether is on Lido Finance.
• Users with limited funds can access staking through liquid staking protocols.

Lido Finance, the largest decentralized finance protocol, has hit the milestone of one million Ethereum validators. On April 29th, Lido Finance announced this achievement in a post.

Liquid staking protocols like Lido Finance are making staking more accessible for retail customers with small amounts of funds. These protocols eliminate the need for 32 Ether to run validator nodes on Ethereum.

According to Dune data, 28.5% of staked Ether is on Lido Finance, while 13.6% is on the Coinbase market. The total amount of staked Ether exceeds 27% of the overall supply.

Significant Growth in DeFi

Liquid staking protocols like Lido experienced rapid growth due to the liquidity benefits they offer users. Through the Lido protocol, users can earn Lido Staked ETH (stETH), a token usable in other DeFi protocols, by staking their Ether.

Traditional staking would render staked Ether tokens unusable during the staking period. The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols surged from a low of $36 billion in Q4 of 2023 to a high of $97 billion in Q1 of 2024. Currently, DefiLlama estimates the total DeFi TVL at $92.32 billion.

The on-chain analytics firm Messari attributed the 65.6% quarter-on-quarter increase in DeFi TVL growth to liquid staking protocols like Lido. Lido leads in TVL with almost $29.9 billion, followed by Rocket Pool with $3.86 billion, according to DefiLlama.