The Ethereum liquid staking derivatives finance (LSDFi) ecosystem has seen a surge in growth this year as Ether (ETH) holders chose to stake rather than liquidate.
Despite ETH withdrawals being enabled with the Ethereum Shapella upgrade in April 2023, an Oct. 16 LSDFi report from crypto data aggregator CoinGecko said the sector has grown by 58.7x since January.
By August 2023, LSD protocols accounted for 43.7% of the total 26.4 million ETH staked, with Lido having the lion’s share at almost a third of the total staked market.
The LSDFi sector growth statistics show ETH holders would rather re-stake for better yield opportunities than liquidate their assets after withdrawing.
CoinGecko noted that since withdrawals were enabled, the exit queue remained at zero for more than half of the time (55%) and stayed below 10 validators for 77% of the time.
LSDs were introduced to enable smaller ETH holders to participate in staking and unlock liquidity after the Ethereum Beacon Chain launch in December 2020.
Since the beginning of this year, the total value locked (TVL) across the 10 leading LSDFi protocols, not including Lido, has surged to over $900 million, according to the report.
TVL in LSDFi…
