Lido, the leading liquid staking platform, has unveiled its latest V2 upgrade, enabling staked Ethereum (stETH) withdrawals. This significant development was launched on May 15, marking the largest upgrade to date for the protocol.
The highlight of Lido V2 is the introduction of Ethereum withdrawals, allowing users to directly unstake their ETH through the platform. To facilitate this, Lido has introduced a dedicated withdrawals page where users can deposit their stETH tokens and receive ETH in return.
Lido emphasized that the stETH or wstETH withdrawal process usually takes between 1 to 5 days. Additionally, the stETH injected back into the protocol will be burnt, resulting in the release of ETH at a 1:1 ratio.
The upgrade aims to address previous inconveniences associated with Lido’s Ethereum staking experience and optimize the utilization of staked ETH within the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem.
The token unlocks dashboard projects a surge in withdrawals on May 16, with 45,830 ETH currently in the pending withdrawal queue. This number is expected to increase as Lido stakers initiate their withdrawals. Approximately 7,000 ETH, valued at around $12.6 million, is estimated to be withdrawn within the next eleven hours.
While Nansen’s dashboard indicates that there are more deposits than withdrawals on the Beacon Chain, it estimates that a total of 20 million ETH is staked. However, this figure may be slightly inflated, as the Beaconcha.in explorer suggests a staked amount of 18.3 million ETH.
The V2 upgrade also introduces a new feature called a staking router, which allows for the development of on-ramps for new Node Operators. This promotes staking diversity by accommodating solo stakers, DAOs, and Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) clusters.
