What is stETH?

stETH is a tokenized form of staked Ethereum that can be used in Lido liquid stakingprotocol. Lido DAO is a platform that offers liquid staking services for Ethereum. The platform provides staking rewards to the users without maintaining staking infrastructure or locking the assets.

Lido helps develop state-of-the-art liquid staking protocols for the growth of the staking economy. In fact, while staking Lido, users mint staked tokens fixed to 1:1 to the initial stake of the user. Such staked tokens can be accessed all over the DeFi ecosystem for compounding the yield of the users.  

The staking on the initial stages of Ethereum 2.0 consists of high market risk regarding frozen staked assets. Therefore, no can withdraw their staked ether and sell them on any exchange. However, the Lido liquid staking protocol is an Ethereum 2.0 based liquid staking protocol that aims to solve the mentioned issue. The users of the Lido protocol can deposit their ether in Lido smart contracts and receive stETH in return. 

stETH token is devoid of issues related to lack of liquidity and can be transferred at any time. As a matter of fact, stETH token balance is calculated based on the sum total number staked ether and rewards, minus the penalties. One of the goals of Lido is to offer stETH coin as a collective and building block for other protocols and applications like as collateral in lending or different kinds of trading DeFi solutions. 

Interestingly, to stake ether with Lido, the users employ smart contracts for achieving stETH in retuned. In fact, the token can be held, sold, or traded. It is important to note that the funds deposited in the Lido protocol smart contract are locked into Ethereum proof-of-stake deposit contract. Therefore, the staked ether can be withdrawn only during the implementation of smart contracts, and transfers are made on Ethereum2.0. 

History of stETH

The all-time high price of Lido stETH was $4,982.43 on November 16, 2021. The all-time low price of stETH was $551.78 on December 24, 2020. The total supply of Lido stETH is 1,651,390.