Value Locked in Lido Rises Prior to Ethereum’s Merge, LDO Token Jumps 23% Higher in 7 Days

In eight days Ethereum is planning to undergo one of the most intensive upgrades since the DAO hard fork in 2016, as The Merge aims to change the network’s consensus mechanism from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). Amid the lead-up to The Merge, the decentralized finance (defi) and liquid staking protocol Lido’s total value locked (TVL) jumped 6.34% this week and the project’s native token increased by more than 23% against the U.S. dollar during the past seven days.

Liquid Staking Service Lido Sees Demand Ahead of The Merge

The Merge is coming and it’s just over a week away from now. Crypto supporters and participants are getting ready for Ethereum’s most notable fork since 2016. Amid the anticipation, the defi protocol Lido Finance has seen significant action during the last seven days.

Lido is a liquid staking service that allows people to wrap their ethereum and collect revenue from the tokens while being able to trade and hold the assets in a non-custodial fashion. In fact, lido staked ether (STETH), which is the wrapped version of ethereum issued by Lido, currently is the 13th largest market capitalization in the crypto economy.

STETH has a market valuation of around $6.57 billion on September 5, 2022. During the last day, STETH has seen $4.18 million in global trading volume. Lido Finance has seen some demand ahead of The Merge and the total value locked (TVL) increased by 6.34% during the last seven days.

Stats from defillama.com and lido.fi both show that Lido’s TVL today is $6.95 billion. $6.78 billion of the $6.95 billion is staked ethereum, according to Lido’s website. Lido is the second largest defi protocol under Makerdao according to defillama.com metrics.

The defi project’s native token lido dao (LDO) jumped 23.4% against the U.S. dollar during the past week. LDO is ranked #48 out of more than 12,000 crypto assets and the token has recorded $56,716,794 in 24-hour global trade volume. There’s a circulating supply of 604,677,030 LDO today and the price has ranged from $1.93 to $2.07 per unit.