Some Ethereum Ecosystem coins are up as the community awaits the Shanghai upgrade. According to the Ethereum developer team, the Shanghai upgrade would allow validators to withdraw their staked Ether from the Beacon Chain to the executive layer.
This upgrade will lead to several improvements, boosting activity on the Smart Contracts on Ethereum 2.0. In anticipation of this upgrade, Ethereum Smart Contract coins like Lido DAO (LDO) are already witnessing a boost in price and trading volume.
While most coins saw declines on the weekly charts, Lido DAO (LDO) maintains an over 10% 7-day price increase with an even more impressive 14-day price rally.
Lido DAO (LDO) And Its Price Rally Catalysts
LDO is the native utility token for Lido DAO. Lido is a liquid Ethereum staking solution allowing users to stake their ETH without minimum deposits while performing regular on-chain activities. It launched its staking app on December 19, 2020, with 1 billion LDO tokens, at the start.
As of now, LDO price stands at $3.11, a 672.34% increase from its all-time low of $0.406150 recorded on June 18, 2022. However, the coin price is 57.05% lower than its over-a-year all-time high of $7.30 on August 20, 2021.
Data from CoinGecko shows that LDO saw tremendous price rallies since January till date. As of January 1, it opened the day at $0.951811 and closed at $1.078. LDO’s price rally didn’t stop there though. It rallied to $2.07 on January 12 and has not corrected back down since then despite price fluctuations and market volatilities.
LDO price is up by 0.38% and trades at $3.06 at press time, with a 39.9% 30-day price increase and an 88.9% 1-year rally. With a 10% price increase over the past seven days, LDO outperforms the global crypto market, which has seen a 3.30% decline. LDO is also outperforming similar Ethereum ecosystem cryptocurrencies, which have recorded a 3.7% price loss over the past seven days.
Lido DAO Ecosystem Trends
Lido is on its way to further decentralization with its Lido V2 upgrade. According to a February 7 announcement on the Lido website, the upgrade will allow for a more diverse validator ecosystem, with new node operators such as solo stakers, DAOs, and distributed validator technology clusters.
It would also allow stETH holders to withdraw from Lido at a 1:1 ratio. This solution offers users alternatives to centralized staking platforms while eliminating the technical and financial challenges of running a solo node. Before this announcement, LDO traded at $2.20 on February 6 and later rose to $2.59 on February 7 after the announcement. Since then, LDO has been on its way up.
Aside from the Lido 2 upgrade, several other developments have happened on Lido DAO. Lido Finance rolled out incentives for ETH lenders, allowing them to earn 44% APY yields. Since every investor wants to earn more rewards for investments, this incentive could attract more users to lend their ETH on Lido.
Also, Lido announced a successful integration on Polygon, allowing new Lido node operations on the Polygon network. Applications for prospective node operations commenced on February 1 and will end today, February 28, per the announcement.
Lido DAO (LDO) Records Massive Surge In Trading Volume
Ethereum staking services are experiencing a surge in staking inflow, probably due to the upcoming Shanghai Upgrade. On February 25, Lido protocol recorded its highest daily staking inflow of over 150,000 staked ETH.
The platform had to activate a Staking Rate Limit to avoid high inflow side effects. This surge in staking volumes could also reflect on LDO’s trading volume, hence pushing its price upward.
At press time, LDO recorded a 48% rise in trading volume in the last day. As of February 27, LDO trading volume stood at $297.16 million. However, today, February 28, the trading volume has increased to $319.31 million.