Lido Finance, one of the largest Merge staking providers, has established two layer-2 networks, Optimism and Arbitrum, which Lido Finance claimed would significantly increase the availability of Ethereum staking while lowering gas costs. Lido is allocating 150,000 LDO tokens in rewards per month from Oct 7 for wstETH across each network. This begins with liquidity mining incentives for various DeFi partners to build wstETH liquidity, incl. @beethoven_x, @Balancer, @CurveFinance, @KyberNetwork & @VelodromeFi. — Lido (@LidoFinance) October 6, 2022 After the team admitted that numerous layer-2 networks had demonstrated economic activity in July, they first announced their intention to extend to L2. At that time, Lido Finance intended to expand staked Ether (stETH) to layer-2 Ethereum protocols as the price of Ether climbed in anticipation of its long-awaited “Merge” to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validation. Today, October 7, they officially launched their new deployment to L2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism. Lido Finance to Provide Liquid Staking In contrast to staking Ethereum directly and locking funds, Lido Finance provides liquid staking, which allows stakers greater flexibility as they can withdraw their funds at any time. Leaders in the industry, like Alesia Haas, CFO of Coinbase, have remarked that institutional staking would not catch on unless the problem of asset lockup can be resolved. Lido offers this adjustable or liquid st...
