DeFi protocol Lido Finance launched an institutional-grade solution for Ethereum liquid staking, expanding investment opportunities for corporate entities.
The Lido Finance team announced the launch of Lido Institutional, an ETH staking solution designed for custodians, asset managers, crypto exchanges, and other institutional entities. Users are promised enterprise-grade reliability and security combined with liquidity sufficient to implement various investment strategies.
Lido Institutional is built for existing customers of Lido Finance, the largest liquid staking protocol. Currently, more than 28.5% of all ETH tokens are staked via the Lido protocol, a figure that recently exceeded 32%.
The launch of institutional-grade services was first reported in February 2024, when the Lido teamed up with Taurus, a company that specializes in providing enterprise-grade infrastructure for digital asset transactions. The goal of the partnership was stated to be to meet the demand from banking and corporate clients for stETH token storage and transactions.
It became known about the partnership between Lido and crypto custodian Fireblocks, which was also aimed at providing institutional clients with services related to ETH staking.
Such a development seems natural, given that liquid staking protocols were the largest category in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector at the end of H2 2023. Furthermore, based on 2024 data, cryptocurrency staking is ~450% more profitable than the dividends of the S&P 500 companies.
