The biggest Ethereum whales started collecting Lido DAO (LDO) in the last 24-hour time frame. Lido DAO is a liquidity staking solution available on ETH 2.0. In recent months, LUNA has faced a similar liquidity crisis.
What is Lido DAO becoming popular with Ethereum whales?
Whale appetite for Lido DAO helped LDO price make a meteoric rise amid the falling market. According to WhaleStats, LDO unexpectedly made it into the top 10 most purchased tokens among ETH whales.
JUST IN: $LDO @lidofinance now on top 10 purchased tokens among 100 biggest #ETH whales in the last 24hrs 🐳
Check the top 100 whales here: https://t.co/N5qqsCShZR
(and hodl $BBW to see data for the top 5000!)#LDO #whalestats #babywhale #BBW pic.twitter.com/4uwa6Z3aUN
— WhaleStats (tracking crypto whales) (@WhaleStats) July 16, 2022
The whale named “Saitama” has purchased Lido DAO worth more than $2.32 million. Saitama currently holds approximately $95.4 million worth of USDC. Therefore, it can be said that it is ready to collect more tokens.
According to the data, LDO is one of the tokens with the highest trading volume among ETH whales. Lido DAO’s last 24-hour trading volume has increased more than 400% to reach $142.3 million.
At the time of writing, Lido DAO (LDO) price is trading at $1.12. It has gained 80% in value in the last 30 days. Despite this, it is currently trading 94% below the ATH level.
Lido DAO’s locked total value increased by 3% in the last 20 days
Lido has seen 3% growth in the last 30 days, with a total value currently locked at $5.28 billion. This increase coincides with the decrease observed in total DeFi TVL in the same period. The current value is $76.7 billion, down about 2.8 percent. Also, in the previous seven days, Lido’s TVL decreased by roughly 1.5%. However, this decline came as the price of Ethereum fell 2%.
Lido is the next LUNA?
StETH is a replacement token for Ethereum locked within the staking protocol Lido. Every StETH is minted when Ethereum is deposited in Lido. The mechanism of StETH has historically been considered safe. Effectively pegged to Ethereum at a 1:1 ratio like LUNA and UST. It is backed by ETH on Ethereum’s Beacon Chain, which has been running since December 2020.
However, due to the volatility in recent months, users have been rushing to withdraw their ETH from Curve pools. As a result, withdrawals from stETH are now more difficult than from ETH. This led to price instability between stETH and ETH.
Staked ETH issued by Lido is backed 1:1 with ETH staking deposits.
The exchange rate between stETH:ETH does not reflect the underlying backing of your staked ETH, but rather a fluctuating secondary market price.
— Lido (@LidoFinance) June 10, 2022
However, unlike other mechanisms, stETH is only unlocked on Ethereum’s PoS network (once it goes live). stETH is more like a liquid interest-bearing cryptocurrency. Therefore, the price stability of stETH and ETH has deteriorated due to the risks associated with the upcoming Ethereum merge, including delays and cancellations. This raises LUNA-like concerns.
