Unchained: Big Ideas From The Worlds Of Blockchain And Cryptocurrency

Ryan Berckmans, Ethereum investor and community member, and Alexandre Bergeron, Bitcoin investor, discuss Lido’s dominance as a liquid staking provider, whether that issue can be resolved, and how it could be a centralizing force for Ethereum. Show highlights: what stETH is, what the uses cases are for stETH, and why it is important how Lido had a first-mover advantage and how that kicked off network effects whether the liquid staking derivatives system is one of a “winner-take-all” how much of the staked ETH will be turned into a liquid staking derivative how Lido might have a huge MEV opportunity after the Merge what the proposer-builder separation is whether Lido's dominance will increase over time whether other competitors have been competitive with Lido why Lido is a natural monopoly because of the incentives and MEV opportunities what the implication of Lido’s monopoly is for Ethereum’s censorship resistance whether Lido is effectively a single entity despite having multiple node operators