In the words of Sergey Gorbunov, co-founder of Axelar, “The cross-chain expansion of the largest liquid staking token will be secured by AXL and enhanced by full-stack interoperability.”
Lido will release the wrapped version of its liquid staking Ether token on blockchains compatible with the IBC protocol.
Currently, Lido provides two cryptocurrencies for liquid staking on Ethereum (ETH): Lido Staked Ether (stETH) being the rebasing token and a new wrapped, auto-compounding variant called wrapped liquid staked ETH (wsteth) that the firm intends to bridge to Cosmos Hub (ATOM). Lido has partnered with smart contract platform Neutron and Axelar, a web3 interoperability layer, for this venture. Once developers finish bridging wstETH from Ethereum to Neutron, users can access these tokens on other ecosystems within the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol. These include blockchains like Sommelier (SOMM) and Cronos (CRO), and DeFi platforms such as dYdX (DYDX) and Osmosis (OSMO).
According to the press release, over 30 projects seek to integrate wstETH, with Axelar and Neutron committing 1% of their network genesis supply to aid the liquidity of wstETH via token incentives. The initial bridging of the wstETH token will be handled by Neutron and Axelar. Lido DAO will take over the ownership and management of the wrapped token once it is deployed on Cosmos and cross-chain governance is implemented.
Lido Finance remains one of the largest providers of liquid staking services with over 26.6M Ethereum tokens staked on its platform. Despite the Shanghai update unlocking staked Ether withdrawals for users, liquid staking remains a popular choice in the crypto community. Data from Dune Analytics revealed that Lido has recorded 7.1M ETH in net outflows since developers released the Shanghai update in April.