The largest liquid staking protocol on Ethereum, Lido, reported a 23% decline in annual revenue for 2025, falling to $40.5 million. The protocol’s market share of staked ETH also dropped, while its governance token, LDO, trades near all-time lows. In response, the Lido DAO is reviewing an automated LDO token buyback mechanism, with a targeted deployment for the second quarter of 2026.
Lido closed 2025 with total revenue of $40.5 million, down from $52.4 million the year before. Its main income source, staking fee revenue, fell from $48.5 million to $37.4 million.
The report noted that gross staking rewards across the protocol fell 18% to approximately $846.7 million. Lido’s share of the staked ETH market declined from over 28% in 2024 to just over 24% by December 2025.
Measured in ETH, total value locked fell from 9.63 million to 8.81 million. The share loss was attributed to capital rotating toward exchange staking, institutional low-risk staking, and subsidized liquid restaking platforms.
The native LDO token was trading at $0.27 as of March 27, hovering near its all-time low. The protocol is now developing a potential LDO buyback plan under the Network Economic Support Tokenomics framework.
The DAO is reviewing an automated LDO token buyback mechanism, with deployment targeted for Q2 2026. Any buyback would only activate once a genuine treasury surplus exists.
Last year, the firm launched Lido Earn, a platform for high-yield stakers that now holds more than 77,000 ETH in TVL. This followed WisdomTree‘s launch of the first stETH liquid staking ETP in Europe.
