Lido Finance: Reliant On Ethereum, But A Strong Governance Story

Lido Finance offers liquid staking where DeFi participants can generate additional returns on illiquid assets by minting derivatives.Lido Finance has become the largest platform for Beacon Chain staking in anticipation of the Ethereum PoS merge.While the token distribution was fairly centralized, the community governance has had success getting proposals amended.Lido Finance (LDO-USD) is a DeFi protocol that currently offers liquid staking on five well-known blockchains. For those not deep in the DeFi realm, liquid staking is the act of minting a derivative of an asset that is staked on a blockchain. When a user stakes an asset on a network like Ethereum (ETH-USD), it generally relegates that asset to be unusable until it is un-staked. While users can typically un-stake their assets if they want to use them for a different purpose, it isn't always the case.For Ethereum, staking for the purpose of securing the parallel Beacon Chain means the ETH that has been staked is locked up until after the Ethereum merge to Proof of Stake. I touched on this in my latest ETH article earlier this week. However, going a bit beyond the scope of that article there is a secondary problem with Ethereum staking that Lido Finance is currently addressing; staking minimum. To stake on Beacon as a validator, users have to have a minimum of 32 ETH. This is a rather high minimum threshold for a typical DeFi participant and it has led to staking pools th...