Lido will stop staking Polkadot and Kusama

A decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol called Lido will phase out the staking service on two altcoins: polkadot (DOT) and kusama (KSM). About this studio-developer of the project MixBytes informed on the official site.

According to the announcement, the decision to delist DOT and KSM was made due to the lack of popularity of the service among users. According to MixBytes, current indicators (data not specified) do not correspond to the business interests of the protocol. Also, representatives of the studio said that the decision was influenced by “macroeconomic factors”. Which ones, Lido did not report.

By removing Polkadot and Kusama from the listing, Lido wants to focus on the Ethereum ecosystem, the developers added. The staking rollout for DOT and KSM is scheduled for August 1st. By June 22, all DOT and KSM altcoins placed on Lido will be available for withdrawal from the protocol.

For the first time, a proposal to curtail support for DOT and KSM was made back in early March. Even then, Lido announced the deadlines for curtailing tokens, but did not go into the reasons for closing the service. The head of product at MixBytes, Konstantin Zherebtsov, argued that the project wants to distance itself from Polkadot due to “market conditions.”

• At the time of writing, there are 3.3M DOTs (~$20.6M) in Lido, as well as 43,200 KSM (~$1.5M), according to Lido. For comparison, ETH cryptocurrencies on the Lido balance are staked for $10.6 billion. Polkadot representatives did not comment on the decision to delist DOT.
• The delisting announcement hardly affected the DOT rate. At the time of writing, the altcoin is trading in the DOT/USDT pair at $6.2 with a daily gain of 5%, according to TradingView. KSM quotes are up 9% at $34.7. Lido’s native token, lido DAO (LDO), surged over 15% to $2.4.