With the surge in restaking, liquidity-staking tokens have regained market attention. The total amount of staked tokens on the ETH chain has reached 14.15 million ETH (approximately $37.702 billion), with Lido alone accounting for 69.49% of the entire Ethereum staking market. More and more dark horse staking projects are frequently gaining recognition, making the staking sector highly competitive.

About ETH LST Token

LST stands for Liquid Staking Token. Investors increasingly favor liquidity tokens in the Ethereum ecosystem due to their flexibility and yield potential. They are also one of the primary ways token holders can earn rewards and support the network. Liquidity tokens provide users with liquidity while staking Ethereum and allow trading or investing in the market.

While Lido and its stETH token dominate the market share, various other tokens are actively innovating with new gameplay, enhancing token stability, and exploring long-term development potential in the market.

Source: defillama

Top 10 Bitcoin NFT Rankings

1. Lido Finance —— TVL：$25.737B

Source: defillama

Lido is one of the earliest liquidity staking protocols and currently the largest. It features top-notch security, deep liquidity, and competitive returns. Lido allows users to stake ETH in a liquid form and receive stETH tokens in return. The protocol quickly gained market recognition due to its decentralization and efficient yield distribution.

Founded in 2020, Lido’s creators come from P2P Validator, a professional non-custodial staking platform. To date, Lido has completed four funding rounds, raising $170 million.

In December 2020, Lido Finance secured $2 million in funding. In May 2021, it raised $73 million in a round led by Paradigm, with participation from Three Arrows Capital, DeFiance Capital, Jump Trading, Alameda Research, iFinex, Dragonfly Capital, Delphi Digital, Robot Ventures (the fund of Compound’s founders), Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, and The LAO. In March 2022, a16z announced a $70 million investment in Lido, and in May of the same year, it received an additional $25 million led by Dragonfly.

Source: lido.fi

Users can visit the official website lido.fi and select any supported cryptocurrency, such as ETH. By clicking on Stake, they will receive a token such as stETH after staking ETH. Conversely, users can directly sell this token to exchange it back for ETH, and the value of stETH will increase as staking rewards accumulate.

Currently, the annual yield for stETH ranges from 4% to 6%, depending on the network’s actual staking rate. Additionally, stETH can be swapped for wETH or ETH on other DEXs like Curve, Uniswap, and 1inch. Besides ETH, Lido supports staking for Solana, Polygon, Polkadot, and Kusama chains.

2. Binance staked ETH —— TVL：3.738B

Source: binance

As one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance offers a simple way for users to participate in ETH staking, significantly lowering the barriers to entry. Users can stake from as little as 0.0001 ETH and earn daily on-chain rewards. They can also stake ETH as WBETH, which can be used for various purposes, such as spot trading, loan collateral, and DeFi yields.

Binance has a range of cryptocurrency products and offerings, including trading and finance, education, data and research, social welfare, investment and incubation, decentralized solutions, and infrastructure. In September 2024, Binance reached a historic milestone with a trading volume of $100 trillion.

Binance’s founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao, previously served as co-founder and CTO of OKCoin, technical director at Blockchain.info, founder and president of Fuzhong Information Technology in China, and technology director at Bloomberg, bringing extensive experience in trading and blockchain technology.

Co-founder He Yi was formerly the vice president of Yidao Technology and a co-founder of the Bitcoin trading platform OKCoin. The CTO, Wang Li, was a former senior architect at Morgan Stanley, providing deep insights into the industry.

Source: binance

Users earn rewards by staking ETH to receive WBETH. Each WBETH represents 1 BETH (1:1 with staked ETH) plus all accumulated ETH2.0 staking rewards. As staking rewards accumulate, the value of 1 WBETH gradually exceeds that of 1 ETH, and it is not fixed at a 1:1 ratio.

According to the latest data on the official website, the total amount of ETH staked on Binance has reached 1,536,450, with an APR of 2.74%. The annual interest rate for ETH staking is dynamic. It follows the on-chain Ethereum staking rewards, which fluctuate due to on-chain activity and consensus rewards. This ensures the product’s sustainability.

3. Rocket Pool —— TVL：$3.189B

Source: rocketpool

Rocket Pool is the first truly decentralized Ethereum staking pool, primarily aimed at fostering a decentralized validator community to ensure that validator power is not concentrated in the hands of a few individuals or entities. Rocket Pool aims to lower the barriers to entry for staking. Users can participate in the network through their nodes or utilize services from other nodes. Unlike individual stakers who must deposit 32 ETH to create a new validator, Rocket Pool nodes only need to deposit 16 ETH per validator.

According to the official website, Rocket Pool currently has 3,753 node operators and 721,536 ETH staked, accounting for 8.59% of the overall staking market.

Darren Langley founded Rocket Pool. Before joining, he had over 17 years of experience in the business sector and remains the driving force behind the Platform. The platform officially launched in November 2021 and announced in February 2023 that it secured private funding from Coinbase Ventures, although the specific investment amount was not disclosed.

Source: rocketpool

Users holding rETH can earn rewards through staking, with the current liquidity staking APR at 2.58% and node staking at 5.01%. The annual yield is between 4% and 7%, depending on network conditions and participating nodes. Users can easily generate passive income through Rocket Pool, as the network supports staking pools for both ETH and RPL. Anyone can earn commissions from staking pool rewards by providing RPL as collateral.

Users can participate as node validators by holding and staking ETH and operating Ethereum validation nodes. During the staking period, they can earn rewards from their own ETH and receive commissions based on the rewards generated for liquidity stakeholders by their nodes. Additionally, as Rocket Pool node stakers, users can directly engage in liquid staking or individual staking to obtain higher returns, though this also comes with greater responsibilities.

4. Mantle Staked ETH —— TVL：$1.332B

Source: mantle

Mantle Staked ETH is a permissionless, non-custodial ETH liquid staking protocol deployed on the Ethereum Layer 1 network. mETH aims to be the most widely adopted and capital-efficient ETH staking token. It is a value accumulation receipt token for ETH staking, with rewards redeemable in ETH.

Mantle is backed by one of the largest DAO organizations to date, BitDAO, founded in 2021 by Daniel Yan and Ben Zhou, co-founders of the Singapore-based cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Bybit. Investors include Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and others. Its DAO treasury manages approximately $3.4 billion in assets, primarily composed of BIT, MNT, ETH, USDC, and USDT.

Source: mantle

Mantle has designed a simpler process based on the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade, emphasizing the integrity of the ETH to mETH process on Layer 1 without adding complexity from other PoS tokens and chains.

Users can stake ETH through the mETH protocol to receive mETH. When they un-stake mETH, they can obtain the underlying principal ETH and accumulated rewards. Currently, the annual interest rate for mETH is 3.39%, with a total of 500,722 ETH staked. Users can receive the underlying principal ETH and accumulated rewards when they un-stake mETH.

5. Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH —— TVL：$528.18M

Source: coinbase

As one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, Coinbase has launched cbETH to provide users with a liquid staking option. Coinbase allows users who stake ETH to receive a token called Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (“cbETH”), which acts as a liquid representation of their staked ETH. Users can obtain cbETH by packaging their locked staked ETH, allowing them to use it across other DeFi and decentralized applications. Currently, cbETH has been deployed on both the Ethereum and Base chains, with plans to support the Solana and Arbitrum networks.

Coinbase was founded in 2016 by former Airbnb engineer Brian Armstrong. To date, Coinbase has completed six funding rounds, and after raising $300 million in Series E funding in 2018, it reached a valuation of $8 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the U.S.

Source: coinbase

Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (“cbETH”) is an ERC20 utility token allowing users to obtain cbETH by packaging their locked staked ETH, which can be used across other DeFi and decentralized applications. This feature enables holders to participate in staking without the limitations of locking or unbonding periods.

According to official data, the ETH staking APR on Coinbase is 2.26%, with a total of 34.41 million staked tokens, representing a staking rate of 28.59%. Coinbase utilizes multiple Ethereum clients to reduce the risk of network outages that could lead to slashing events. The node operators also run validators across multiple hosting environments (such as bare metal, AWS, GCP, etc.) and various regions to maximize the resilience of their infrastructure, thereby further minimizing the risk of associated slashing.

6. StakeStone —— TVL：$428.61M

Source: stakestone

StakeStone is a decentralized liquid staking protocol based on Ethereum, designed to provide users with flexible and secure staking services. It integrates mainstream staking pools, Re-Stake, and LSD blue-chip DeFi strategy yields to offer new high-adaptive staking yield underlying assets that require liquidity for LSD, providing users with more earning opportunities. StakeStone’s uniqueness lies in its Layerzero OFT standard cross-chain compatibility and innovative staking optimization mechanisms.

StakeStone has secured multiple rounds of investment, with Binance Labs announcing its investment in StakeStone in March of this year, although the specific amount has not been disclosed. In the same month, OKX Ventures announced its investment in StakeStone and established a strategic partnership with the project. Other funding details have not yet been disclosed. The core team of StakeStone consists of technical experts from the blockchain field and professionals from the finance sector, continuously developing the technical infrastructure of their protocol to provide users with safer, more transparent, and efficient staking services.

Source: app.stakestone.io

The price of STONE is determined by smart contracts and is not influenced by DEX prices or information platforms like CoinGecko. The earnings provided by StakeStone mainly come from two parts:

• Staking Rewards: Users can stake ETH on the StakeStone platform to participate in Ethereum network validation and earn ETH staking rewards. These rewards are based on the inflation model of the Ethereum network and the number of stakers. Currently, StakeStone’s annualized return is 3.19%, with a total of 163,433 ETH staked.
• Liquidity Rewards: By obtaining STONE tokens, users can earn staking rewards and provide liquidity on other DeFi platforms or applications while still earning staking rewards. Users can also earn trading fees and liquidity mining rewards by providing STONE-ETH liquidity.

7. Frax Ether —— TVL：$362.15M

Source: frax finance

Frax Finance is an innovative decentralized stablecoin protocol and DeFi stablecoin infrastructure. The Frax ecosystem is a self-sufficient DeFi economy that uses stablecoins as currency. Frax Finance integrates its stablecoins through internal sub-protocols Fraxlend (lending market) and Fraxswap (market maker). Frax currently issues three stablecoins types: FRAX, FPI, and frxETH.

One of Frax’s founders, Sam Kazemian, is also an angel investor for the Fantom Foundation and a co-founder of Everipedia. Travis Moore, the CTO and one of the co-founders, has nearly a decade of experience in blockchain technology and entrepreneurship. Core team member Nader Ghazvini is an experienced data scientist with years of experience in the computer software industry, specializing in mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, natural language processing, and natural language understanding.

Frax Finance has reportedly completed two rounds of funding in July and August 2021, with funding tokens representing 12% of the total supply. However, the funding amounts and valuations have not been disclosed. The rounds were led by Dragonfly, with follow-on investments from Electric Capital, Robot Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, Balaji Srinivasan, Stani Kulechov, and others.

Source: app.frax.finance

FXS is the staking and governance token of the entire Frax ecosystem. All utilities are concentrated in FXS, and its locked variant is veFXS. Users can earn rewards by staking FXS tokens, with lock-up periods ranging from 7 days to 4 years. The longer the lock-up period chosen, the more veFXS is earned. Holding veFXS gives users greater weight in receiving mining rewards.

According to the official website, the current locked FXS amount has reached 51.9 million tokens, with an APR based on veFXS = 0.25 FXS (currently at 790%). The main cash flow distribution mechanism of the Frax protocol directs funds to veFXS holders. Cash flows earned from AMO, Fraxlend loans, and Fraxswap fees are typically used to buy back FXS from the market and then distributed as rewards to veFXS stakers.

8. StakeWise —— $345.3M

Source: www.stakewise.io

StakeWise is a liquid staking protocol on Ethereum that offers a variety of flexible staking solutions. It allows users to easily manage their staked assets, earn additional yield in DeFi, and withdraw their stakes at any time while flexibly managing staking rewards. All Ether staked through StakeWise can be liquid via osETH, a liquid staking token.

Founded in 2019, StakeWise’s core team primarily hails from Estonia. Founder Dmitri Tsumak has over a decade of experience in blockchain software, while co-founder Kirill Kutakov previously worked at Avaron Asset Management, also from Estonia. In March 2021, StakeWise completed its first funding round of $2 million, led by Greenfield, with participation from gumi Cryptos Capital, Collider Ventures, Lionschain Capital, and others. In March 2022, Blockdaemon announced a strategic investment in StakeWise, though the specific amount has not been disclosed.

Source: app.stakewise.io

The official website shows that the current APY for StakeWise staking is 3.21%, with over 5,000 users participating and a total of 128,384 ETH staked. Users primarily earn rewards through the StakeWise protocol via Vaults and the osETH token.

• Vaults: Users can stake ETH into different Vaults to earn ETH rewards, while Vault operators earn staking fees. Anyone can launch their own Vault for others to stake in.
• osETH: osETH is a liquid staking token accumulating ETH rewards for its holders. It can be used for trading staked ETH in DeFi and earning additional rewards. osETH is minted by stakers in Vaults who wish to use their stake in DeFi. Anyone can exchange their ETH for osETH in DeFi and earn ETH rewards by holding the token.

9. Stader —— TVL：345.25M

Source: www.staderlabs.com

Stader is a non-custodial staking platform built on smart contracts designed to help users easily discover and access staking solutions. It provides critical staking middleware infrastructure for retail cryptocurrency users, exchanges, and custodians across multiple PoS networks, simplifying the transaction process and facilitating investment participation. Stader is rapidly expanding to other PoS blockchains and currently supports Ethereum, Polygon, Hedera, and BNB.

The Stader team is primarily based in India and comprises members with extensive experience in blockchain, technology, and cryptocurrency. CEO and co-founder Amitej Gajjala has over a decade of experience in strategic consulting and startup management, having worked at Swiggy and ATKearney. CTO and co-founder Sidhartha has a long history in crypto mining and technology applications. Co-founder Dheeraj has over ten years of engineering experience in Silicon Valley, with previous roles at LinkedIn, Blend, and PayPal.

Founded in 2021, Stader completed its first funding round of $4 million in July of the same year, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, True Ventures, Solana Foundation, and Terraform Labs. In January 2022, Stader raised $12.5 million in a private funding round, achieving a valuation of $450 million, and completed a public funding round of $23.5 million in February of the same year.

Source: www.staderlabs.com

According to the latest data, Stader’s total locked value has reached $91 million, with over 100,000 staking users, making it one of the leading liquid staking protocols across multiple chains. Stader has particularly excelled on the Hedera and Polygon chains. The total rewards paid out by Stader exceed $25 million, with an annual percentage rate (APR) of 3.06%.

Unlike other staking solutions, Stader offers a representative token called ETHx. This token allows users to trade, sell, or use it in DeFi protocols while still earning staking rewards. This enhances the liquidity and usability of users’ staked assets. ETHx enables users to earn staking rewards through the ETH they hold.

For example, if a user stakes 100 ETH at an APR of 5% with a staking rate of 1:1 and receives 100 ETHx, the value of the ETHx holdings will increase as the exchange rate rises. After one year, the user’s 100 ETH will have grown to 105 ETH. Changes in the ETHx/ETH exchange rate will also impact the user’s passive income.

10. Swell Liquid Staking —— $308.52M

Source: www.swellnetwork.io

Swell Network is a liquid staking protocol that provides users with a seamless liquid staking and restaking experience, simplifying access to DeFi while ensuring the future of Ethereum and restaking services. Users only need to connect their wallets to stake ETH, earn $swETH, accumulate airdrop points, and start earning rewards.

In 2022, Swell raised $3.75 million in a seed round led by Framework, with participation from investors such as IOSG Ventures, Apollo Capital, Maven11, and Bixin Ventures. Additionally, notable angel investors include Mark Cuban, Fernando Martinelli (Balancer), Ryan Sean Adams, and David Hoffman (Bankless), who are also investors in EigenLayer and Puffer.

Source: app.swellnetwork.io

Through Swell, users can earn passive income by staking or restaking ETH, thereby earning blockchain rewards and restaking AVS rewards, along with liquid tokens (LST or LRT) that can be held or used in the broader DeFi ecosystem for additional earnings. Official data shows that Swell’s latest staking amount has reached $992 million.

swETH represents the ETH staked by users and the accumulated staking rewards, with the current official APR at 3.70%. The total staked ETH stands at 110,331, with over 130,000 users participating in staking. swETH has the same utility as ETH in DeFi, allowing it to be transferred, used as collateral for borrowing, and providing liquidity while still earning staking rewards.

rswETH is a native liquidity restaking token (LRT) that offers restaking rewards, with the current APR for rswETH at 3.08%. Over 38,200 users have participated in staking, contributing a total of 86,235 ETH. Additionally, users have the opportunity to earn rewards from EigenLayer and potential airdrop opportunities from token issuances.

Conclusion

With the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade, the issuance of innovative staking protocols like restaking has garnered increased market attention, resulting in a continuous rise in the scale of ETH staking. It is believed that the amount of staked ETH could reach 31% to even 45% of Ethereum’s total supply in the future, further enhancing the market value of LSD.

Liquid staking offers users more advantages than traditional staking protocols. It lowers users’ participation barriers, allowing withdrawals without waiting for the lock-up period to end. Not only is it simple and convenient to operate, but it also provides richer and more flexible reward opportunities. LST can be used across other DeFi protocols to engage in various liquidity mining activities, leading to broader applications of LST and attracting more users and capital into the ecosystem.