It was back in September of 2022 when the Merge upgrade had been implemented for Ethereum. It was speculated that the Ether itself will benefit tremendously from the upgrade.
Unfortunately, things did not work out to go in that direction. The market downtrend obstructed all the growth and the benefits Ether could gain from the implementation of the upgrade.
Lido Finance has benefited the Most
While the entire cryptocurrency industry is eager to understand how much Ether has benefited from the Merge, it is Lido Finance that is flying high.
According to the latest TVL data shared from the decentralized finance (DeFi) market, it has become obvious that Lido Finance has benefited the most from the Merge.
Lido Finance is a liquid staking protocol and has been one of the most prominent staking pools in the entire DeFi industry. Since the upgrade, the total value locked (TVL) for the protocol has continued surging.
The TVL has surged so much that it has become the highest in the entire DeFi industry. This is a huge achievement for Lido Finance and grants it great dominance over the decentralized industry.
Lido Finance is at the Top
The latest data suggests that the TVL of the liquid staking protocol has continued surging since mid-September. It has surged to a point where it has surpassed the TVL of all of its DeFi competitors.
Now, the total value locked of Lido Finance is the highest compared to all other protocols within the decentralized finance space.
Data from DeFiLlama
DeFiLlama a major data analytical firm has provided information about the TVL on the Lido Finance protocol.
The firm has revealed that as of now, the total value locked on the Lido Finance protocol is over $5.9 billion. It has become the protocol with the highest TVL defeating the likes of MakerDAO.
Prior to Lido’s dominance in the DeFi TVL market, it was MakerDAO with the highest TVL. At the time of writing, the TVL on the MakerDAO protocol is worth $5.89 billion.
The third-largest protocol in the DeFi with the highest TVL is AAVE. At the time of writing, the TVL on the AAVE protocol is worth $3.7 billion.
Lido Finance’s Staking Data
Lido Finance has even shared the data pertaining to the staked cryptocurrencies on its protocol. The firm took the liberty of updating the TVL rates per crypto on its website on January 2.
The firm revealed that the liquid staking it is currently monitoring is for Ether (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), and Kusama (KSM).
The highest crypto staking it has is for Ether which is worth $5.8 billion. Then comes Polygon with an overall staking of $43.9 million on the Lido Finance protocol.
Then on number three, is Solana with overall staking of $23.2 million followed by Polkadot with $11 million locked. Lastly, there is Kusama which comes up with a $2.2 million staking strength.
Former Liquid Staking Processes
The reason behind Lido Finance’s success is the traditional cap that it has removed for the users wanting to perform staking.
Prior to Lido Finance’s inception, the users needed a minimum of 32 ETH to participate in the staking process. It suggests that only the investors with big bucks in their pockets were able to benefit from staking.
However, Lido finance has changed the tradition for good and it became one of the most demanded staking protocols in late 2022.
ETH moving from the PoW consensus to the PoS protocol worked in favor of Lido Finance. The users on Lido Finance were able to stake the ETH in their possession.
This eventually rose in fame and to this day, the ETH TVL for Lido has been rising quite remarkably.
The officials at Lido Finance revealed that from October 2022 until November 2022, they continued generating $1 million from fees on a daily basis.