stETH

stETH is the liquid staking token minted by the Lido protocol. It represents a user’s proportional ownership of ETH deposited into Lido’s staking pool, including accrued staking rewards.

How stETH Works

When ETH is deposited into Lido:

• The protocol mints staking shares and assigns them to the user’s wallet
• A wallet’s stETH balance is derived from its share of the total pool
• As the staking pool earns rewards, stETH balances increase automatically via rebasing, reflecting the user’s growing claim on the underlying ETH
• stETH is fully transferable and can be traded, transferred, or used as collateral across centralized exchanges and DeFi protocols without unstaking

Key Attributes of stETH

• Fully backed by underlying staked ETH and accumulated rewards
• Transfers economic ownership of staked ETH without requiring validator exits
• Broad ecosystem support across DeFi and institutional platforms
• Can be wrapped into wstETH, a non-rebasing ERC-20 token whose value appreciates over time, making it suitable for protocols that do not support rebasing tokens