DeFi Platform Lido to Cease Staking on Polkadot, Kusama in August

Decentralized finance (DeFi) staking service Lido (LDO) will sunset its staking program on Polkadot (DOT) and Kusama (KSM) on Aug. 1, according to a blog post by Lido developer MixBytes.

MixBytes gave several reasons for stopping the service, with adoption and growth not meeting the "business case expectations to sustain investment."

"Challenged macro economic factors and adjacent lack of liquidity in Polkadot's DeFi ecosystem undermined the value proposition of liquid staking," MixBytes wrote.

Lido is a liquid staking protocol that allows users to use staked ether (stETH) on other protocols and blockchains whilst reaping the staking rewards.

Deposits are no longer being accepted on Polkadot and Kusama, and on June 22 all assets will be automatically unstaked. The official termination date is Aug. 1.

In total there is $4 million worth of staked DOT tokens on Lido and $75,000 worth of KSM.

The Lido DAO (LDO) token is up by 19% over 24 hours at press time, trading at $2.44. KSM and DOT, have risen by 10% and 7% respectively.

(Source: CoinDesk)