- Lido will stop staking on Polygon in June 2025 owing to poor adoption.
- The unstaking phase begins on December 16, with a six-month transition window.
Lido Finance is the biggest liquid staking protocol in the DeFi space and has recently declared that it is shutting down its Polygon staking service. It made the declaration on December 16, 2024. The move follows a discussion by the Lido Decentralized Autonomous Organization as well as a vote by the community to endorse the action. Lido DAO holders voted for the proposal submitted by Shard Labs in the year 2021.
There are a couple of reasons why Lido decided to discontinue services on Polygon. According to Lido, two big drivers of this decision were limited user adoption and a general shift in DeFi dynamics. Plus, liquid staking activities within the network have been falling as a result of Polygon having adopted zkEVM technology. Also, the governance of Lido seemed to want to direct their attention back to Ethereum since most activity happens here.
Timeline of Sun-Setting and Transition
The team has scheduled a depreciation date and provided a grace period for the transition. From 16 December 2024, new staking will no longer be accessible through the Polygon interface. The period of grace for these six months will expire on 16 June 2025. During these six months, users can unstake the tokens they previously staked. Lido recommends that users unstake their stMATIC tokens by this date to ensure a seamless process through the Polygon UI.
There will be a short break from January 15 to 22, 2025, during which staking operations on Polygon will pause and hence temporarily stop the withdrawals. On or after June 16, 2025, interface assistance with Polygon protocol staking will be discontinued, and users will only be able to withdraw funds through explorer tools.
This is a significant shift in the focus Lido makes in the DeFi space. Lido claims to boast a TVL of $38.4 billion, one of the major leaders in liquid staking, but the focus now shifts its resource concentration on the Ethereum network and its increasingly growing ecosystem.
