Lido Poolside: Tokenholder Update, November 2025

Transcript

Lido vibes

[music] Hey, hey, hey.

>> [music] >> Hi everyone and uh welcome to the Lido

Intro

token holder update call. Today we'll walk through how the business has evolved over the last three months, where the protocol and its products are heading and what's next for the LDO token. After that, we'll open the floor for questions. Before I introduce our speakers, let me share a bit about today's procedural details. We'll address your questions after the presentation and we'll do our best to wrap up the whole call by 3M UTC. So, you can post your questions on whichever platform you're watching the stream, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube. But please note that our YouTube live chat doesn't currently support viewers sharing links. So, if you have a question that includes a link, please post it on Twitter. And yeah, without further ado, let's get this this call started.

So, welcome to the November Lido poolside token holder update. We're joined today by Vaseli, so the Lidol Labs executive director, Izzy, chief of staking at the ecosystem foundation, and Sam, chief legal and operating officer at Lidol Labs. Villi will take us through today's update covering key product, business, and financial highlights. After the presentation, everyone will be available here for Q&A. So, you'll have a chance to ask your questions directly. And without further ado, let's start off with Basil. So, the floor is yours.

Lido fundamentals

Hey folks. Uh, hey folks. Um, um, I start with this disclaimer. Uh, happy to be on this call. uh and the material in it is forformational purposes only. Uh it's not an investment uh legal or tax advice. uh this is like just the thoughts that uh um I'm currently thinking and will express as uh as a presenter and that subject to change without um without know um to

um remind people who am I executive director of Lido Labs co-ounder of Lido. Um I used to be a CTO and research lead before I became a GR director um around uh during this year end of May. Uh and uh uh to remind what is uh uh Lido what is Lido doing? Um and um why users are actually LIDO? Lidor is a Dow that um maintains the liquid staking protocol um which is simple and secure way to stake ether at low cost,

low effort, very capital efficient uh it can be used in D5 for many many many purposes. It has best-in-class liquidity uh for unstaking and u for trade in defi and on centralized exchanges. Uh light of governance structure is the um light uh which is a D that is governed by votes by Eldor token holders.

that uh um set parameters and upgrade LIDO uh liquid staking protocol uh receives uh protocol revenue uh from it in the treasury uh and um pays and set goals to liel labs and um similar foundations that um I am an executive director of uh and uh like Web development maintains the code that is used for upgrades for maintaining the protocol deliver new features and stuff like that. Uh light web is completely uh governed by light.

So it can be it's what people called a book the uh um foundation uh that is by by laws is required to uh to listen to the light token hold the walls. Um I am the executive director of lightabs is chief of stings and is chief legal officer and chief operating officer. uh lighter labs uh measures the success by making the best sting product on Ethereum while growing surplus longterm for LO holders and the agenda for my update today is I'm going to update you on the market

state uh the financial update of lightab I will touch on buybacks and proposal that have been posted today uh overall strategic outlook and then proceed to questions and answers Uh so the market state uh today is um going through uh Q2 to Q3 since the last update uh is that Lido has lost uh a bit of a share and uh mostly centralized exchanges uh Coinbase, Binance and Kraken and uh not operators who work with uh big institutional centralized and the holders are up in the share and

Market state and Lido's position in the market

the rest of the market is down. One of the big reasons for that is the recent uh uh the leverage in uh in October uh when um funds that were maintaining delta neutral position had reduced their position both on the uh in bull side and where they had liquid uh or illquid staking uh exposure and uh stable coin side. Um the over the course of the quarter the share has got down but in October we actually had a growth month uh one u one growth month in a long string of um

decreasing the share and what I hope and think is going to be the trend reversal. um the staking market segments that I established on the last call uh which is simple liquid staking, exchange staking um um lowrisk staking and API maxes had changed a bit not not much but like simple liquid staking which is uh uh the category is dominant in uh had uh gone down by uh about one% point. Exchange staking stayed more or less the same in share.

um lowrisk staking which is simple delegated staking has gone up uh by 4% essentially and uh uh the category of uh higher risk high API staking like uh risk takingaking leverage staking and similar uh setups had uh shrunk a bit uh the uncatategorized and various different kinds of taking also gone um down a bit And uh uh our share by segment uh had also changed but not by much. Uh we uh have slight fluctuation in simple liquid staking. Uh we are about the same in exchange staking. We

have no beach head in lowrisk staking yet and APR maxes part we are slightly higher. Um on simple liquid staking side lid continues to lead the simple staken segment. uh at 89% share. Um the core remains stable. Uh their reduction uh in uh uh share is driven by withdrawals not competitive loss in the second. So um we also have a bit of a good news here. Uh one is that uh we released community sticking module uh version two [clears throat] uh recently over the

course of the quarter. It's not only a big improvement in terms of uh staking decentralization and allowing permissionless staking lido. It's also better on the margin because uh average uh um D take rate on community staking model is about 6% uh versus average take rate on created model which is about 5%. Um and uh there had been just recently a proposal to uh transition the created module from a fixed operator feed model to a dynamic market based routing system. Uh starting with a um small uh fee decrease uh uh for nonoperate take

decrease for most of the not operators and expected impact of that is about 30,000 E early yearly u starting early next year. So uh we are working on uh making margin better uh exchange staking is uh more or less in the same uh state it was uh on the last update. It's very hard sector to uh get uh an improvement in and we are looking for uh solutions here. But in general we are listed on uh many uh centralized exchanges stick listed on many centralized exchanges and not listed in uh uh on a few big ones uh yet. So um lower staking we currently have no

penetration in uh but what we want to do here like what we want to achieve here is to uh enable growth in this segment by launching library 3 uh stake walls um which is essentially uh allowing people to do delegated staking with instant liquidity on demand uh which is improvement in utility versus just regular uh delegated statement. You can call it forgiveness++ because it allows uh not just equity but also participation in defy and defy yields, participation in traditional finance by borrowing against the uh

liquid part of your stated position on demand and uh it takes very little time to switch from uh liquid to illquid uh staking position compared to regular unstaking rest. It's about like uh a few seconds versus two months of waiting for withdrawal and deposit cues. Uh we have early traction uh through discussion with custodians uh and leading not operators like soul sty course one state P2P uh building st products.

Um the other interesting direction here is uh uh ETPS and ETF uh ETFs there uh is a filing for one stiff ETF under review in US as some of you are already aware. uh on the PR maxis segment. Um uh we uh have a bit of a growth which is um um we presented in this segment with leverage staking collateral for risk takingaking and lighter earn position. uh ladder earn is uh uh

um has increased from like 21 million in January to 200 million uh in November after uh launching GGV and strategy vaults. Um and uh uh Lido Dow income up kick from earn is about like 3 to 5% increase uh in revenue uh just on the like what is essentially early launch. Um the growth on Leon at current time is uh like with launch of strategy is reignited again but it used to stall. Um so we are working on execution here.

Financials

Um and to tie it in in over overall financial update um a reminder how uh Lido uh staking works. Um I'm sorry for reexplaining some basic uh things about Lido um over and over again. But this is a call for every audience that want to be present. So uh I'm going to um say a lot of things that you can already know. uh the uh user uh who wants to participate in uh staking ether can uh stake it with lighter protocol. This if is going to uh sting modules like created module,

simple DVT module, community staking module which distribute these if to not operators uh who will um validate the Ethereum protocol and receive staking rewards. Uh these st rewards uh are mostly um directed to UA in forms of sty basis. Uh uh but about 10% is uh like 10% exactly is a fee that goes to about 5% of like 5% point of it goes to light and about 5% points.

um a bit more now both the community studio uh u version two. So it's not just flat 5% uh as it used to be. Um this is on protocol uh site on light website. uh in 2025 our cost discipline uh is to spend about 31 million on base spending which is like things that cannot be uh easily reduced like easily cut on uh maintenance of protocol development of the upgrades alongside with the Ethereum upgrades uh operations stuff like that

uh and uh up to 10 15% of treasury on uh growth and liquidity. Uh so one is a target, the other is a cap essentially. So um how it looks um as you can see third quarter had been a quarter in the red. So we have uh expenses are lower than um our net dow revenue.

Um we also have a bit of appreciation for assets that are holding treasury. Uh like if price has increased and uh compared with the uh first quarter out in USD equivalent is uh like uh more than twice bigger. and uh uh based on what we can say about uh lightabs like budgetary projections until the end of the year we are uh going to remain within the target budget.

LDO buyback framework

Uh one thing that uh we did talk also on the last call and uh um continue to work on is the buybacks and uh value for LJO um there is a post proposal on um the DA firm. Uh the gist is to automate bitebacks uh and pair the board LDO with rockstick teeth in liquidity position owned by Urban Agent uh improving LDO liquidity and removing partial LDO from circulation um and generate LP fees to the the D. Uh this buyback mechanism uh is proposed to

trigger only over certain price of bit which is proposed currently at 3,000 and estimated DA uh uh revenue over 40 million uh dollars over year. Um and 50% of treasuring flows are going to be directed uh to this mechanism. uh um in clips that we'll get like we'll do no more than 2% impact and there is a proposal of 10 million spent on annual cap on these buybacks.

Uh the discussion uh link to discussion is on the screen in the QR code. You can easily find it in research forum um for the DA and I ask you to participate in discussion and uh um uh this is a proposal this is not a like decision or done deal. Uh the decision done deal is going to be on the uh finalizes governance world. So uh if you think that uh the parameters are uh can be made better uh or there can be different models that you like more please participate in the discussions.

and one more thing that I wanted to uh start talking today is uh early uh teaser of what I think the goose 3 uh submission should be. Um uh this year to remind uh goose is a set of goals goal setting exercise for lighter labs uh by token holders. Uh someone anyone can propose a set of goals for lighter labs. Uh that is going to be voted in by token holders and lightabs expected to execute on these goals like toward these goals over the next year and the next years.

Long-term vision for Lido

Um and uh uh traditionally uh light labs does uh uh or someone else like does some uh crafted uh proposal for for boost and this is what I am thinking currently can be a good direction for lido in 2026. Um so uh uh the gist is uh uh how I'm thinking about it is that um the uh lido staking is in a pretty good place feature wise uh it's uh um the mission for lido is to make staking

simple secure and decentralized and door governance with community staking module Feature wise we are pretty much uh very close to uh to achieving this mission like it's going to be an um uh evergreen thing to maintain it. uh but there I don't think there are major features that can uh um do more than uh moderate proof of a decentralization or security or uh uh how simple it is to to do statement. But we can uh expand the um the

customer base like the uh uh st uh to different staking segments. We can uh support uh liquid staking with uh um many different side products and staking is going to remain the flagship product of lido. Uh we are going to work on stake walls modular st infrastructure for um in um introducing lightweight 3 that is very good for um channel partners like custodians lay tools not operators uh that to build custom staking uh returns product on stiff liquidity

um and uh this is our uh breakthrough into lowrisk segment. And uh the target we think can be achieved is about a million stake by the end 2026. And uh we can expand into ETFs and ETPS. and uh uh we can work on work on improving the uh economics of uh light staking by introducing um validator market that turns uh uh simple and uh location of stake uh that is like more

or less flat currently within module into market based system where DA can set fee ceilings operator can compete by performance by uh decentralization by uh u and uh like the fee uh amount to uh to get stake from the uh uh from the DA and our target here is to improve in your revenue by about 3,000 uh I think we'll also need to expand beyond staking Um um we are living in the very interesting time for crypto or time of adoption. We got from early adopters to early majority. Now a lot of businesses, a lot

of people are using u blockchains for uh currently for stable coin transfers and like don't care about how or what products are built. They just like need uh working um um uh applications. And uh this is going to just increase the defy is going to be exposed to um midspace business, midspace people, midspace uh high net worth individuals and funds. And uh there needs to be more products that Lo can offer this real world economy um than just taking. Right now we have like one huge product which is ST

uh a seat for expansion forms of V3 and ST WS and a small um but very uh interesting direction form of liquid walls and lighter earn and in 2026 I think we need to expand beyond that. So we have uh yeah many lines of revenues many products and uh uh we innovate continuously not on just staking but on uh uh defy and working with uh real world and midspace uh from staking to uh defy gateway for real businesses.

Um so in summary uh we are executing plans um we want positive impact the market share in Q4 and early Q1 uh 2026. Uh there is a um spending discipline uh in terms of having more revenue streams, more cost action teams and increasing margin. Um we are uh proposing to commit to value approve to the token uh at uh this moment overall uh over the course of the year Lido is uh running in the red like it doesn't have uh a

positive surplus but when this positive surplus is there there should be a mechanism to utilize it for value growth. Uh this is my uh belief right now. Um and Lido is going multi-roduct with like is I I think Lo should go multi product with good three and move up the funnel closer to the customer. that's it. Thank you. Uh great. Uh thank you for that. uh appreciate the update and overview and I think it's um quite exciting for a lot of listeners and viewers. So from here

we're going to move on to the Q&A session. Um quick reminder to our viewers and listeners, you can send in your questions on the platform where you're watching this stream. So on Twitter, on LinkedIn or on YouTube. Uh please note that YouTube doesn't allow viewers to share links live in the chat. So if your question includes a link, please post it to Twitter. So yeah, uh starting off in recent weeks, we've seen permissionless vault platforms like Morpho and Oiler face major issues with unback vaults. Uh in light of V3, this is even more critical since permissionless vaults will directly impact the value of Ste. Are you completely confident that you can protect Ste's value when issuing tokens

Protecting stETH value against permissionless vault risks

against these pools and that your security measures will be fully sufficient? So this question is to Izzy. >> Yeah. So I I think uh like there's a lot of different layers to this question. So I'll start by >> doing like a brief summary of how SD vaults work. So SD vaults are essentially uh native staking uh vaults if you want to think about them this way uh that are collateralized and then allow SD to be minted against them. So the underlying token is always ETH uh and that underlying token uh is either staked or in the vault and basically like made available um for like against the minted ETH. Uh the second thing is

that vaults operate using the concept of a reserve ratio. So that basically means that vaults will never have a onetoone uh minting of SDH against the underlying ETH collateral. So there will always be some percentage of ETH in a vault uh that essentially cannot be minted as SD. Um so all of these things come together uh into a risk framework and the risk framework basically looks at a bunch of different things. Uh is the vault permissioned or permissionless? So for example for permissionless vaults there is a very aggressive uh risk reserve ratio meaning that uh I think like a maximum of 50% of the vaults TVL can be minted um as the amount of STE that can be minted in totality in aggregate by

all of the permissionless vaults put together cannot exceed a certain safety threshold which will start very small with a launch of lighter V3 and SD vaults um and steadily increase but it's not going to be like the the focus um and so you're also relying on, you know, the trusted and reputational element of identified professional operators to be able to do diligent due diligence on them and to appropriately set the different uh reserve ratios for the different vaults um based on which node operators operate them, how many vaults node operators operate in total, what is the amount of STDs being operated by this node operator in general. Um so that you can calculate things like what might be the the risk exposure from a catastrophic slashing perspective. um if

the entirety of the stake of a node operator was was somehow slashed. Um on a second perspective, you look at like the likelihood of these events happening. So uh it's very very unlikely that we'll see a catastrophic slashing like it's never happened and um the risk model still takes a very very conservative risk approach uh into account. Um and the third thing is basically the security kind of like focus or or paranoia uh that pervades everything that lighter contributors do. Um I think right now the fifth uh audit uh from three different auditors on lov3 is being finished and the last observations have come in and they're being assessed by the team right now and

figuring out um what fixes need to be done if any uh what tests need be need to be done to uh check the fixes and the reviews that will be done by the auditors afterwards. Uh there is an internal security committee um that basically reviews every piece of code and the totality of of the code uh that lido smart contracts are uh after every release and thinks about things you know from an aggregate perspective and not only looking at the peace meal releases um and security comes first. So uh actually we had hoped to launch light 3 I think like early autumn. Uh right now we're looking at like a mid December launch date and that basically comes from this insistence that security is

quintessential. Um smart contract risk is like the biggest risk that that we care about and we're doing everything uh possible to make sure that that all the bases are covered from that perspective. >> Great. Uh thanks that was very comprehensive answer. Next one up for Vasili. Uh, do you have any plans to increase the low voting participation rate by incentivizing delegators? So, Lido's own core vaults may have centralized governance, but Lido V3 shouldn't. Do you think the same?

Incentivizing delegators and other governance initiatives within Lido V3

>> Um, so I'm not currently thinking about anything in this direction. Uh, incentive like we have some uh incentive problems for delegates. Uh, so who can attract uh delegators? uh but I think that the right way to uh like what right thing to focus on right now is the value of more than uh incentivizing participation. I didn't get the second part of the question and how it relates to uh participation in general. Um uh permissionless part of light with three walls is not going to require any major counter decision or something. Uh but

any tires beyond permissionless uh with better terms and u uh um are going to be wed by the doubt to not introduce any extra risk. They are essentially a way for us uh as adult to assess that uh um there is not a lot of risk and correlating staking that the not operator is not going to purposefully slash and stuff like that. >> Great. Uh thank you very much. And next one I think will be for Izzy again. So will Lido open its liquid staking services to other blockchains for

Extending liquid staking offering to other blockchains

example Hyperliquid or Salana? How can Lido perform and win? >> Uh so this is a great question. Uh I I think probably actually we get it every quarter and the answer is uh if you look back far enough uh Lido was on on multiple other chains. So you know there was Lido on Salana, there was Lido on Polygon uh even polka dot and Kusama uh at some point. I think um as we think about like what large institutional allocators want uh the original thesis was that you want a basket of all of the large uh LLC's and you want a single provider basically and I think that thesis was correct but it was probably made at the wrong time. Uh the market hadn't settled yet around what the

crypto majors were. The staking um environment in general was very very nent. Uh and the thing that it also didn't take into account is >> taking >> different sorry there's a bit of feedback how differentiated um the different networks are from each other. So um to a large extent uh I would say that different networks and different protocols are almost more like different nations. There's a very large cultural element to being able to successfully launch a winning product um on Solana and it differs a lot from what it looks like on on Ethereum. Uh and as a single staking provider, I think it's much more difficult to be able to do that and do that well on every different venue. Um

and the other thing uh that you face when you try to do that is essentially the uh fact that there are local players if you want to think about it this way whose sole purpose is to win that specific market uh and they have tokens and they will use all of their tokens to basically win that market versus as a very large player if you want to play in multiple different markets you still have one token and then you need to compete in multiple different venues with with that one token uh which drastically disadvantage disadvantages you from an economic perspective. So to go back to like the original question, um I think everything makes sense as long as we consider uh broadening the scope of you know where Lido is and what Lido does. Um but there's probably a little bit more settling to happen uh in

the industry in general with regards to like what the proof ofstake majors will be uh in a couple of years from now. Uh the majority of staking revenues I think like are clearly still on on Ethereum. uh and as we start to see more institutional adoption, I think it will have a clearer picture of where it makes where it might make sense um to re-engage or engage for the first time uh based on what the appetite there is for for large capital asset demand. >> Great. Thank you.

Growth initiatives and their results

Um okay, this is a question for Silia, I think. So what are the highest impact growth items that are being worked on right now? What are the expectations in terms of growth resulting from these and what are the resources that are being allocated to these respectively? Yeah, I'm in the mikon. So um there are uh separate like two big separate bets I'd say uh currently for high uh impact growth items and one of them is uh staked ws and led three which uh is a uh impact growth uh direction for expansion

lowrisk staking and working with channel partners. Um the other uh impact growth uh item that uh I have hyped holds for is lighter liquid walls and earn which uh are an expansion further expansion into uh hyper market segment essentially next year uh um based on like how market accept that as a and what we can actually get uh we will uh double down on that. Uh maybe focus some um uh resource deploy into working with uh

exchange trading products. Um and uh uh um maybe like completely separate different product that uh will come up over time. We are going to create smaller like some form of it all startups for uh uh making the uh uh new products that are complimentary tools taking and toy position of flight in the industry.

uh what are the sorry what are the resources that can uh that are being allocated to those respectively is uh uh on world known side it's smaller site uh currently uh most of the development and uh operational resources are on uh making the three uh launch uh safe and sound and successfully. uh but I think that over time the share of resources that is like pushed on staking side and on complimentary product side is going to be shift from staking to complimentary products.

Uh that's awesome. Thanks. Next up, so I think the next one would be for Izzy. Um, I'll just wait for it to come up on screen. Okay. So, yeah, if CSM is more profitable than the curated module and it is obviously better for decentralization, what are the plans to increase CSM's share? Um so there's like a lot to unpack here. Uh let's start with the first one. CSM is more profitable in the curator module.

CSM’s share increase

This is currently true on a per staking unit basis. So like ETH for ETH or validator for validator. Um but this is only as a result of the CSMV2 upgrade. So previously um CSM was uh not the most profitable module. Um and the reason for that is that basically the module was geared towards community stakers like home stakers and the module had a node operator fee um that essentially like made it very very very profitable but it did make sense from a scaling perspective. Um and so contributors spent a lot of time designing a very robust system around identifying community stakers and that's basically what we call people that are staking from home um or at least uh you know using like a virtual server if they can

stake from home uh but are running their own validator uh and using a fractional bond uh in order to do so. So basically putting up a fraction of the total of the 32 ETH for for a validator uh and using that system of identifying these community stakers and this is not like a a KYC system. It's a system that combines various different aspects from KYC to onchain activity to uh proof of how people have benefit over Ethereum and staking ecosystems um to give these specific node operators better terms and then at the same time it makes the default or permissionless node operator terms uh still better than solar staking but not as profitable uh as it previously was. So uh for these default node operators, node operators receive 3 and a half% uh of the the staking

rewards and the DAO receives uh 6 and a half% and that's how the 10% comes together. Um the next part of the question I think is if CSM is so much better for decentralization. So there's a really complex question here uh which is is are permissionless systems like more decentralized than distributed systems uh and is there a balance between something being permissionless and something being well distributed and and robust and I think in general what we see is in fully permissionless systems they're actually not that decentralized because there's other aspects of decentralization that suffer as a result of this fully permissionless systems tend to be pretty centralized um and you will have a like a few node operators running the large bull work of

of underlying stake. That's not to say that CSM isn't decentralized. It it actually is pretty well decentralized and pretty distributed, but there are a few very large node operators running the majority of stake. Um the third is that there's an implication that CSM can scale to the size of the curated module. Uh and basically it can't. um due to the fractional bonding requirements, it is really not possible uh and there's not that many homestakers uh to essentially rely on to run that amount of stake. Uh and the fourth part is um yeah, we identified that there's ways to make CSM more cost efficient uh from the Dow perspective uh and more profitable and still make it make sense from both a homestaker and a permissionless staker perspective. And the same kind of

thinking is going into >> going into the um re sorry the restructuring basically of the curated module whereby we're like looking at the node operator fees and we're instilling marketdriven elements uh and competition around pricing for for node operators. So the first step to that is what Vasil mentioned which is that in December um there's a proposal to lower fees in the current curated module uh and use a primitive node operator type system like we had in CSM building up to the middle of next year when we we hope to be able to release the curated module v2 which will basically have like a built-in market mechanism uh and a ceiling on

fees and so we anticipate that the curated module from that point forward will be as profitable or more profitable than CSM. >> Awesome. And uh here's a question. So where can we find what these segments mean? Uh this might be taking us back to the simple staking segments and those that were being outlined in your presentation earlier. >> Yeah. Um this is about segment segments. I uh proposed this uh market segmentation in the previous community call. Uh the uh like the full answer is going to be there. Uh in short uh liquid staking

Market segments explanation

simple liquid staking is just liquid staking without any extra source or something. This is something like st for by Lido rocket pool stake wise things like that. when you uh put in if and receive the taken uh token return. Um um uh higher PR segment is uh anything when you can't want to milk uh more rewards from your staking accepting more risk like restaking when you accept the risk of like additional slashing or uh like multi on top of multi-seek uh on your stake and uh uh stuff like that or leverage taking when you also accept the

risk of uh borrow rates and liquidations and stuff like that. uh this also includes liquid walls where there is also uh some kind of like management risk and uh similar products. Um low lowrisk staking is uh simple delegated staking uh or uh uh like uh self staking essentially uh something that um many uh big stakers do they chosen not operator u uh low risk takingaking is characterized usually by large staking positions and low fees on

these large sting positions. Uh so it's like on the lower side of the margin but it's liquid and uh this bugs a lot of people. Um uh and the final staking uh segment is staking exchanges and this is like uh pretty self-explanatory. It's kind of uh uh people putting it on like on Binance, Coinbase or something and staking there. it's also like a pretty big part of sticking. The final one is like everything else. And this includes uh unidentified sticking positions and a bunch of like uh something uh

uh smaller like not uh uh not falling into other categories. essentially mostly it's unidentified like we we couldn't analyze it >> and yeah for listeners we will publish a recap of the token holder call so we can include a definition of these different sort of segments in there for you so stay tuned. So the next question I think this could probably go to Vasili again. Um what is the current Dow revenue if buybacks are with um Lido or or if and only if Lido revenue is above 40 million. Um is it even a chance to see these buybacks? Uh

Proposed conditions for buyback framework

so the answer is like if it was deployed today it would be uh working today essentially it is over 3,500 and leo like analyze leo revenue is about I think like 45 million or something like that in dollar terms. So it's something that is true today, but if east is about like sub 3,000 uh then it's probably not the time to to buybacks given the uh like costs and growth expenses and stuff like that.

>> Great. Thank you very much. On to the next. Yeah, there we are. Oh, nice. Perfect. Lido market share to 169%. Okay. Um maybe the next question we could pass on um to Izzy. So how could ETH ETFs be beneficial to Lido? Maybe you could unpack sort of what a a Lido staked ETH ETF would look like.

Benefits of ETP/ETFs for Lido

>> Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, for those that don't know, an ETF is an exchange traded fund. Uh, it is a subclass of a general class of products called exchange traded products. Um, sometimes you see them used interchangeably. Sometimes you see people say one is American and one's European. Uh, a bunch of different stuff like that. It's complicated financial terminology. We don't need to get into the details but essentially these are packaged financial instruments uh that are made available via uh registered exchanges uh that people can use to to buy and sell and trade uh assets in a regulated manner. So why is something like this beneficial for a decentralized and defy protocol like Lido? Uh there's two reasons. One is that essentially it

allows users that may not traditionally um have access to native digital asset products. Um and they may not have access because they might be regulated organizations um or institutions or companies um and basically they're not allowed to hold these assets and so they need to rely on custodians that hold these assets. Uh or they might not know how to how to do it, right? And so it's beyond kind of like their technical capabilities. Um so doing this basically allows Leido to reach new segments of customers um and new addressable markets. From their perspective um even if they could hold digital assets maybe they want to hold a traditional packaging of it for a variety of different reasons. But one might be that there's better tax um benefits in doing

so. Another might be that they're able to collateralize it uh and take a loan out against it. So they could um essentially buy it, store it with their bank who would custody it yet and then be able to take a loan out against it. Whereas taking out a loan in DeFi might be more complicated from a tax or an accounting perspective. Um so really it broadens not only the uh applicability of of LIDO products and state in particular to this different segment of customers, but it also broadens the the use cases. And so it's very very possible that we might even see digital asset treasuries that would actually have exposure to the same underlying product like STE both via a traditional packaged version uh like an ETF or an ETP and also via a onchain native

version either by holding the asset directly um or using it in DeFi or having it and then using it in uh a product that's further up the value chain like GG. Great. Thanks. Uh yeah, that was very clear. So yeah, as we talk about getting closer to end users, um what sort of closer to user products are we potentially going to see in 2026? Uh yeah. So for one thing that is uh um I expect uh with hyperblit to happen is we're going to see more of the uh lighter walls in the end like liquid walls and earn uh including um other

User-facing products for 2026

assets like stable coins and stuff. Um that's uh one direction. The other direction is working with channel partners like not operators and world crates and stuff like that on v3 adoption which allow them will allow them to keep the client uh they who is sticking with them but also allow them to participate in defy um and get their sweet defy yields uh which are which is not as close to clients I get as a direct product but it's pretty the uh other things can be there but they are like on the uh uh

um more of the like uh not close to this now not close to being used now maybe in the ideation phase so I'm not going to commit like to uh get them deployed but we are also working on um uh interfaces for uh integratable interfaces for DeFi for different kind of also like channel partners like custodians, banks and stuff like that. >> Great. Uh this question I think we could probably pass over to Izzy. So how will Lido compete with custodial staking uh going forward? So services like Coinbase, potentially different ETFs.

Custodial staking competition

>> Yeah. Uh that's a really good question. So I can give my personal kind of uh assessment or inkling of of how the market is going to develop. So custodial staking is the immediate next step. Uh and it makes the the most sense. Um what I mean by that is that the uh I don't know what you want to call it like friction I guess for entities that are already custodying ETH for example with Coinbase to then go and use Coinbase to stake with it is very very minimal. uh entities doing one step further and essentially accessing DeFi is a little bit more complicated. Uh but that's essentially why uh asset issuers like VANC uh in the states who have filed uh an S1 which is basically like a

request for the SEC uh to review their product um are choosing assets like uh STE to to create the the package around and what using ST in lie of native staking uh essentially allows these asset issuers to do uh is to create what I believe is a superior product uh and it's a superior product because it allows for a larger percentage of the underlying assets of the AUM of the product to be staked uh and gathering rewards. And it also allows for the uh redemption activities to be kind of like dual faceted. So you can both unstake to meet redemptions if you want to or you can essentially use the liquidity that ST has on the market which is uh unparalleled and probably like across

multiple networks um to meet redemptions uh in kind meaning that a user maybe can just like withdraw their SD if they want to uh as a and and still benefit from staking. um as opposed to having to go through the withdrawal period in Ethereum which is dynamic and can be very very long. So as we see now uh it's up to 40 days for example to withdraw your ether and what this means for natively staked products is that essentially the share of ETH that is unstaked in the product compared to the share of ETH that is staked uh needs to increase which means that the total rewards or APY on the product decreases uh together with that the second aspect here is that looking at where the market will be like a year or or two years from now. So when we look at DATs um

essentially what they want to do uh is perform like with their assets as as best as they can. So the first frontier is like holding the assets and if they do well and appreciate then the DAT does well. The second frontier is then staking these assets and the third frontier is using these assets in DeFi. Um amongst liquid staking tokens I think STE is the only one that's really really usable at any size that matters in DeFi. It has the largest amount of like utility, the largest amount of integrations, the largest amount of liquidity if you need to redeem or shift your positions around. Um, and the largest assortment of products that it basically slots into. So when we think about where a lot of these institutional players will be like two years from now and we think

about like what kind of DeFi LEGO they need in order to chase those yields, I think SD is basically like a quintessential ingredient of this. >> Awesome. Super. Yeah, super answer. Um, okay. Next up, I think this could probably go to Vasili. So, how do you expect that earn success will be measured in 2026? Is it going to be on uh level of TVL margin, Dow revenue or just aggregate market adoption? So, uh we are yet to set up the uh OKAS KPIs and lighter labs for that. Um so this is not a final answer. Essentially what I'm current uh thinking currently

Lido Earn’s success measurement in 2026

is to have a pair of metric that would measure success and one of them should be uh uh the revenue essentially uh and the other uh should have to do with um uh and it's more maybe more than with like uh we we want we don't want to pay like insane costs for this uh uh revenue And we also want uh to have a decent quality. So like uh uh low risk and uh decent APR. So like I think this is going to be the like u four key metrics uh where the one that's driving growth is lighter revenue and uh uh what

is setting up the uh like uh sanitary condition for that is uh costs to make it happen and quality. Thanks. Um okay and then I think one uh one last question to close us out and anybody here can take that. So when is buyback going live? Uh so if the current proposal is voted in uh Q1 2026 should be the uh date when it's uh when it's leave. Um it's not a given uh that uh what is currently in the profile is going to leave uh is going uh leave because uh some people for example like which we already seen

Buyback proposal roadmap

like in Twitter on the forum want different things for uh audio call and uh we have yet to hear from them. So um if you have a strong opinion about how it should be done uh please go on the forum and uh state it. Okay I think without further ado that wraps us up from the Q&A. So yeah thank you all uh and thank thank you to the whole audience for all of your questions. These were great. They covered a really wide range of um imminent sort of open questions for the protocol and its products and thank you

to the speakers um were some exceptional comprehensive and legendary answers. So and yeah just before we sign off um if you scan the QR code just up here in the top right uh you can join the buyback proposal in the forum. So we encourage everyone to share your thoughts, ask questions and get involved in sort of building this uh public protocol together. Uh next in the bottom right hand corner uh let's meet in Argentina. So Lido contributors are heading to Buenosis um for Dev Connect next week. There will be an event called Lido Day which is a full day on the

future of Ethereum staking. And there we go in a little bit more deeply to strategy updates, product demos, and look at new tools for builders using SC vaults. So this will also contain kind of candid discussions about core CSM's first year and what's next for LIO V3. So again, two great things to scan here. Uh we'll keep it up for a little bit longer. And finally, just please like, share, and help spread the word. Uh, I think it helps more people stay connected with the Lido Dow for you to repost this video after you watch it. Uh, if it's been helpful for you, uh, again, please share it on with a quote retweet. So, thank you all.

>> Heat. [music] Heat.