Lido

Lido on Solana was a liquid staking protocol that allowed SOL holders to stake any amount of SOL and receive stSOL — a freely transferable liquid token representing their staking position. The protocol operated from September 2021 until October 2023, when the Lido DAO voted to discontinue it due to unsustainable economics. It no longer accepts new stakes and its front-end interface was shut down in February 2024.

What Problem It Solved

Native Solana staking locks delegated SOL for the duration of an epoch (roughly two days) and requires users to choose and manage their own validators. Lido on Solana abstracted that complexity: depositors received stSOL immediately upon staking, with no minimum deposit requirement and no need to select a validator. stSOL could then be used in DeFi — as collateral, liquidity, or for yield farming — while continuing to accrue Solana staking rewards in the background.

How It Worked

Users deposited SOL into the Lido program on Solana Mainnet. The protocol distributed that SOL across a curated set of validators chosen by the Lido DAO. In exchange, users received newly minted stSOL tokens. As validator rewards accumulated over each epoch, the exchange rate of stSOL relative to SOL increased — meaning stSOL holders earned yield simply by holding the token.

Withdrawals were staggered across epochs due to Solana's native staking cooldown. Smaller positions could be exited more quickly by swapping stSOL for SOL on decentralized exchanges such as Saber and Raydium rather than waiting for the native unstaking window.

Validator selection and protocol upgrades were governed by the Lido DAO, with decisions executed via LDO token votes on Ethereum. The on-chain Solana program address was CrX7kMhLC3cSsXJdT7JDgqrRVWGnUpX3gfEfxxU2NVLi.

Development History

Lido on Solana was conceived and initially built by Chorus One as a Lido Ecosystem Grant Organisation (LEGO) project, with Lido DAO approval and a mainnet launch in September 2021. Before launch, the codebase underwent two security audits, including one by Bramah Systems, and an ongoing bug bounty program was established.

In March 2022, P2P Validator acquired stewardship of Lido on Solana from Chorus One, taking over development, maintenance, and validator coordination responsibilities.

The stSOL Token

stSOL was an SPL token on Solana Mainnet. Its value accrued rewards passively: the protocol did not distribute separate reward tokens but instead increased the SOL-per-stSOL exchange rate over time as staking rewards flowed in. At its April 2022 peak, the protocol held approximately $440 million in total value locked. By the time of its discontinuation in October 2023, TVL had fallen to around $55 million.

stSOL was integrated across several Solana DeFi protocols during its operation, including Saber (for liquidity provisioning) and Raydium (for trading and farming).

Shutdown: DAO Vote and Financial Unsustainability

By mid-2023, P2P Validator had invested approximately $700,000 in building and maintaining Lido on Solana, while the protocol had generated only around $220,000 in fee revenue — a net loss of roughly $480,000. P2P requested additional funding from the Lido DAO to continue operations but the DAO declined.

On October 5, 2023, a Lido DAO governance vote concluded with over 92% of participating LDO holders voting to sunset the Solana product. The official rationale cited financial unsustainability and insufficient market share to justify continued investment. Lido stopped accepting new SOL stakes on October 16, 2023. Node operators began voluntarily off-boarding in November 2023, and the front-end unstaking interface was shut down on February 5, 2024.

Post-Sunset Complications: The $24 Million Lock

The exit from Solana was not without incident. After the front-end interface was removed in February 2024, a smart contract bug surfaced that prevented a portion of stSOL holders from withdrawing their SOL via the command-line interface. The issue was traced to changes in Solana's Rent-Exempt Split logic, which conflicted with the withdrawal process encoded in the Lido smart contract.

At the time the bug was identified, approximately $24.4 million in stSOL remained in circulation across roughly 31,600 holders. P2P Validator acknowledged the issue and on April 3, 2024, released an updated maintainer bot and revised CLI documentation to allow manual withdrawals. While no direct smart contract patch was deployed, the updated tooling enabled most affected holders to recover their SOL, though the process required technical familiarity with Solana's command line. Holders were also directed to alternative exit routes via protocols such as Sanctum and Jupiter.

Ecosystem Fit and Legacy

During its operation, Lido on Solana represented one of the earliest and largest liquid staking options on the Solana network, predating the broader proliferation of native liquid staking tokens that now dominate the ecosystem. Its discontinuation made room for purpose-built Solana-native liquid staking protocols — including Marinade Finance and Jito — to take on the market it had helped establish.

Lido as a broader protocol remains active on Ethereum, where it is the largest liquid staking provider by TVL. The Solana program listed in this Compass entry carries a Support Ended status and is no longer operational.