Lido DAO’s Governance Token LDO Jumps on Treasury Proposal

LDO, the governance token of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind liquid staking system Lido, has gained 10% on the day after it submitted a proposal on Tuesday over whether it should sell or stake the $30 million in ether from its treasury.

The proposal was submitted by Lido DAO’s financial unit, Steakhouse Financial, and considers four treasury-related proposals, including whether the DAO should sell or stake the 20,304 ether (worth about $30 million) it holds in its treasury, diversify its stablecoin holdings and sell its protocol surplus of staked ether to finance operating expenses.

The token, LDO, was up 18% early Wednesday and has since retreated to around 10% higher on the day. LDO has gained 30% in a month and witnessed a rally late last week after the news that U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken had settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sunset its crypto staking service in the U.S.

Ethereum staking is the process of locking up an amount of ETH for a specified period of time in order to contribute to the security of the blockchain and earn network rewards. Lido DAO enables non-custodial staking which means users can stake their locked Ethereum into other protocols.

Lido DAO has the highest total value locked of all decentralized finance protocols, according to DeFiLlama, ahead of MakerDAO and Curve Finance. It has some $8.4 billion of staked ether on its platform.

The DAO also had a proposal submitted on Wednesday for approval for the authority to donate up to a maximum ceiling of 22 million LDO to a grants association for use in a Token Reward Plan (TRP), a framework that will distribute voting LDO tokens spread over a period of up to four years to DAO contributors.