Lido – one of the most popular liquid-staking platforms – saw 10,000 unique ether (ETH) depositors opt into the protocol, contributing toward total value locked (TVL) crossing a landmark $15 billion worth of tokens in July, a level not seen since May 2022.
According to a monthly report by Lido, the number of unique ether depositors surpassed 166,000, representing a 6.66% increase this past month. Lido’s TVL passed $15 billion on July 14, though due to the recent decline in the price of ether it stands at $14.81 billion at press time.
The increase in both measures comes as the number of staked ETH (stETH) in decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity pools slid more than 53% to about 161,000.
DeFi traders typically keep their attention on liquidity, because it measures how easily crypto investors can access stETH.
The drop in liquidity in DeFi pools was “ largely because of the uncertainty surrounding Curve exploit/situation with many LPs [liquidity providers] withdrawing until there’s more clarity,” said Kasper Rasmussen, Lido marketing lead, to CoinDesk in a Telegram message.
Curve Finance, a decentralized stablecoin exchange, lost more than $73 million in a recent hack, causing spillover effects to other entities in the crypto ecosystem, including Lido. Curve has since recouped about 73% of the stolen funds.
Despite the decrease in stETH in DeFi liquidity pools, the demand for stETH remains strong for lending protocols and layer 2 rollups. Market participants not only want to back their loans with LST collateral, they also are looking to bridge their LST to layer 2 rollups, evidenced by Aave holding over 736,000 stETH, per Nansen, as well as “Arbitrum and Optimism bridges experiencing increases of 16.58% and 10.23% in wstETH deposits, respectively,” the report says.
Edited by Shaurya Malwa.
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