Lido DAO (LDO): What It Is, Uses and Risks

Lido DAO (LDO) is the governance token of Lido, a liquid staking protocol on Ethereum. With Lido, a user deposits ETH and receives stETH, a token that represents the staked ETH and its rewards while remaining usable across DeFi. Lido is a decentralized autonomous organization, meaning decisions about the protocol are made by token holders rather than a single company.

LDO is a separate asset from stETH. Holding stETH gives you exposure to staked ETH and its rewards. Holding LDO gives you a vote on how the protocol is run. The two tokens serve different purposes and move on different price drivers, although the health of the Lido protocol affects both.

On our site Lido is listed as a staking pool with a score of 8.6 out of 10. LDO is classed as a DeFi token, an infrastructure token and a governance token. At the time of writing it ranks around 140th by market capitalization, so it is a mid-sized asset rather than a top-tier one.

LDO's main purpose is governance. Holders can vote on proposals that shape the Lido protocol. Typical topics include changes to protocol parameters, the approval of node operators who run validators on behalf of stakers, how the fee taken from staking rewards is handled, and how the DAO treasury is spent.

Voting happens through a mix of tools. Off-chain polls are commonly used to gauge sentiment, while binding decisions are carried out through on-chain voting contracts. Holders can also delegate their voting power to others who are more active in governance.

It is worth being precise about what LDO does not do. It is not the token you use to stake ETH, and it does not automatically entitle holders to a share of the staking fees. Any use of the treasury, including incentives or buybacks, would need to pass through the governance process. Anyone considering LDO should read current governance proposals instead of assuming a revenue-sharing arrangement exists.

LDO has a fixed maximum supply of 1 billion tokens. As of 2026-11-05, about 829.6 million were circulating, which is roughly 83% of the total. The remainder is still to be released or held in locked allocations.

At a price of about $0.34, the market cap was about $283.1M and the fully diluted valuation about $341.2M. Trading volume over the previous 24 hours was about $22.3M. These figures change constantly and should be checked against a live source.

The original distribution, as publicly described by the project, set aside portions of supply for the DAO treasury, early investors, founders and contributors, and others. The exact allocations and unlock schedules are best verified in Lido's own documentation rather than recalled from memory. Because the maximum supply is capped and most tokens are already in circulation, remaining unlock pressure is smaller than for many newer tokens. A capped supply does not guarantee any particular price outcome.

LDO was issued on Ethereum and also exists on Optimism, Polygon and Arbitrum. LDO is not the native coin of any blockchain. On the non-Ethereum networks it appears as a bridged or network-specific version of the token, and the contract address differs on each chain.

Like other ERC-20 tokens, LDO can be held in any wallet that supports Ethereum and compatible networks. Holders can delegate voting power from the same wallet. Moving the token between networks uses bridges, which add their own technical risks.

In general terms, LDO trades on centralized exchanges and on decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap. Liquidity differs by venue and by chain, so the quoted price and the cost of a large trade can vary. Check which network a token is on before sending it. Sending LDO to an address or exchange that does not support that network can result in lost funds.

Lido grew into one of the largest staking services on Ethereum, which made LDO one of the best-known governance tokens in DeFi. The token reached its all-time high of about $7.30 on 2020-08-20...