Introduction

Methodology

26.19 percent of users who buy through the Lido Dapp hold their Staked ETH an increase on the Total percent of those that buy on the open market.

Sellers who sell their holding of staked ETH after buying on the Lido Dapp hold on average for 66.6 days.

Interestingly before August 15th 2021, users who bought on the open market were more likely to be holders if they bought through the open market than if they bought through the Staking Dapp. In recent weeks we see a reduction in the percentage of holders selling their SETH as the price of ETH has been dropping, with 94% selling on May 4th 2022 and a low this year of 40.3% selling on June 4th 2022.

Users who buy through the open market are more likely to sell, a user buying on the open market wouldn't need to use their staked ETH to redeem their ETH held on Lido. This could offer less of an incentive for a buyer to hold their staked ETH.

• For the chart's Percent Sold stETH - Lido Dapp & Percent Holding stETH - Lido Dapp analyse those who held or sold the staked ETH they deposited to the Lido contract 0xae7ab96520de3a18e5e111b5eaab095312d7fe84 using the deposit function 0xa1903eab, joining deposits with transfers away of stETH away from the stakers address. Returning results daily, and dividing those who sold or bought by total number of transactions to get the percentage. Joining the results with the price of stETH.

• For the table Total Percent Hodl or Sell - Lido Dapp as above, however instead of daily returning the total results.

• For the chart's Percent Sold stETH - Open Market & Percent Hodl stETH - Open Market analyse those who held, sold or got rid of the staked ETH they bought on the market by not returning stETH from the lido contract address 0xae7ab96520de3a18e5e111b5eaab095312d7fe84 and deposit function 0xa1903eab by joining deposits with transfers away of stETH away from the stakers address. Returning results daily, and dividing those who sold or bought by total number of transactions to get the percentage. Joining the results with the price of stETH.

• For the table Total Percent Hodl or Sell - Open Market as above, however instead of daily returning the total results and no join with stETH price.

• For the number Average Stake Duration For Sellers - Lido Dapp show the amount of time sellers hold their stETH by joining addresses that bought stETH, with addresses that sold stETH and showing the time difference between a buy and a sale that takes the address lower than their initial buy. Using 0xae7ab96520de3a18e5e111b5eaab095312d7fe84 and deposit function 0xa1903eab to find addresses that staked through the Lido App.

• For the number Average Stake Duration For Sellers - Open Market show the average amount of time sellers hold their stETH by joining addresses that bought stETH, with addresses that sold stETH and showing the time difference between a buy and a sale for addresses with a lower amount of stETH than their initial buy.

Shoutout to Zook#2707 for the logic behind the average stake duration charts which I adjusted and used the newer Ethereum Core tables with.

We can see that in January most people acquired staked ETH through the LIDO dapp in 2021 to sell or use elsewhere. There are days such as the 25th of January where the majority of users are holding the trend up until August 2021 was users selling their SETH holdings.

This is despite ETH growing from 656$ in price to a peak of 4209 on May 12th 2021. After a dip to 1773$ in late July we do see an upward trend in both the number of people holding and the price of ETH, in August we see a growth in the price of ETH from 2595$ dollars on August 1st to 3932$ dollars on the 6th of Sept 2021, the number holding goes from 6.7% to 38% during this period.

In the most recent month with the price of ETH dipping we have seen a decrease in the number of people selling their Staked ETH, with a high of 79% holding when ETH was in a downward trend at a price of 2039 the same day. With ETH at its lowest price this year of 1195$ on Jun 14th, we see the percentage selling at 36.8%. Showing that people are currently more likely to hold as a result of negative price action.

Lido is a liquid staking dapp on a number of chains, such as Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot and Polygon. It allows individuals to stake ETH and access the value of the ETH they have staked through the asset Lido Staked ETH.

This means a users ETH can remain staked while and they can utilise the value of that Staked ETH in DEFI through stETH. The balance of users staked ETH automatically updates daily at 12pm UTC. This offers investors a number of ways of accessing the staked rewards, they can simply buy staked ETH on the open market with an asset of their choosing, or they can stake native ETH through the Lido dapp and get stETH in return.

Lido staking removes a massive barrier to entry for investors who want to stake their ETH, Ethereum requires a minimum of 32 ETH in order to stake, Lido has no minimums allowing investors to stake an amount of their choosing.

Sellers who buy on the open market hold for 24.38 days a 63% decrease when compared to those who buy through the Lido dapp.

Conclusion

Overall we see that Lido offers investors a way to utilise the ETH that they have staked on the platform or an easy way to buy an asset that represents staked ETH. Holders who buy through the Lido Dapp, hold for longer and are less likely to sell, whereas holders who access Lido Staked ETH on the open market hold for 63% less time when they do decide to sell. Price has had some correlation to the number of people holding in the last few weeks, with investors who buy on the open market and through Lido, both more likely to hold the asset as the price of STETH has dropped when compared to previous times.

The Data