Staked Ether (STETH)

Staked Ether (STETH) is the liquid staking token issued by the Lido protocol on Ethereum. It is minted on a 1:1 basis when a user deposits ETH into Lido’s staking smart contracts, which pool the deposits and delegate them to a set of independent node operators running Ethereum validators. As an ERC-20 token, STETH can be transferred, traded, or used across DeFi platforms while the underlying ETH remains staked and earning consensus-layer rewards.

Each STETH balance rebases daily to reflect accrued staking rewards, net of the protocol’s operator and treasury fee, so holders see their token quantity increase over time rather than receiving a separate reward payout. The token’s value is backed by the ETH held in Lido’s staking contracts, and holders can exit either by trading STETH on secondary markets or by using Lido’s withdrawal mechanism to redeem it for ETH.