Try Quests to earn cryptoLido's stETH makes staking ETH accessible to the masses. This tokenized form of staked ETH makes staking possible with fewer than 32 ETH.
Instead of locking their staked ETH in Ethereum 2.0, Lido exchanges it for stETH, a liquid token that represents staked ETH.
In this post I explore the different use cases of stETH.
I look at stETH transfers out of wallets using ethereum.udm_events. I sort the destination addresses by their to_label and their to_label_subtype.
I apply the sum function to all stETH transferred to the each labelled address. To keep the result set manageable, I removed results where the sum of stETH transferred was under 5. The period of observation is the last 30 days ending on June 6.
Credit for the query goes to Lunasg.
I begin by looking at where stETH owners are sending their tokens. Over the last 30 days, there were more than 1500 stETH transfers to liquidity pools.
In terms of aggregate volume, more than 500K stETH was transferred to pools during the period. Also substantial is the 290K stETH that was transferred to vaults.
We can drill down deeper by looking at the to_label.
The four most popupal places for users to send their stETH are:
- Curve (they host the largest stETH/ETH pool),
- Uniswap,
- Lido (the creator of stETH), and
- Anchor
In term of total stETH transferred, Curve has attracted the largest sum, followed by Anchor and Lido.
By looking at the addresses where wallets are sending their stETH, we got a sense of the various use cases for stETH.
The most popular use case is to send it to an Automated Market Maker, Curve being the most popular one. This could either be to stake the stETH in a liquidity pool, or to trade it for another token.
Another popular use case is to use stETH as collateral to borrow. During the last 30 days, over 285,000 stETH was sent to Anchor protocol.
Anchor allows user to bond stETH to borrow UST. Anchor is available on the Terra Classic blockchain. With the recent collapse of Terra, we can expect stETH transfers to Anchor to stop entirely.
This chart shows daily stETH transferred to Anchor in the last 30 days. During the collapse of Terra, a large sum of stETH was sent to Anchor. This was likely to replenish the balance sheet of borrowers and prevent liquidations.
Surprisingly, even today there are still stETH sent to Anchor.
More than 2,500 stETH (and ETH) is currently bonded on Anchor.
What have we learned?
Most stETH is sent to Curve liquidity pools (either to trade or to provide liquidity). A lot of stETH was also sent to Anchor protocol. Anchor's popularity decreased sharply after the collapse of Terra.