Lido Revenue Drops 23% in 2025 as DAO Reviews Q2 2026 LDO Buyback
Lido reported a 23% revenue drop in 2025 to $40.5M (from $52.4M in 2024). Staking fee revenue fell to $37.4M, as execution-layer and consensus-layer rewards weakened with Ethereum scaling and issuance dynamics.
Key metrics also deteriorated for Lido: TVL declined from 9.63M ETH to 8.81M ETH (-8.5%), and Lido’s staked-ETH market share slipped from 28%+ in 2024 to just over 24% by Dec 2025. The DAO attributed share loss to capital rotating toward exchange staking, institutional low-risk strategies, and liquid restaking platforms that subsidize yields using their own tokens.
In response to governance-token valuation concerns, the Lido DAO is reviewing an automated LDO buyback mechanism (under NEST tokenomics) targeted for Q2 2026. The plan would use protocol-generated yields to buy LDO in the open market, then place the tokens into an LDO/wstETH liquidity position controlled by Lido. The buyback should only run after a real treasury surplus exists, and a manual governance swap module is already built ahead of technical validation.
For traders, the immediate takeaway is softer Lido revenue momentum, balanced by a potential catalyst in 2Q26: the LDO buyback review and its possible implementation. Monitor LDO liquidity on the LDO/wstETH pair and ETH staking flow trends for confirmation.
Neutral
Revenue and fee weakness plus TVL/share declines are typically a near-term bearish signal for LDO’s fundamentals, suggesting less staking inflow and lower protocol-generated income. However, the DAO’s planned LDO buyback in Q2 2026 could partly offset valuation pressure by creating buy demand funded by protocol yields, and any progress toward that mechanism may improve trader sentiment.
Net effect: direction is not one-sided. Until details on treasury surplus, execution, and timing become clearer, the market is likely to trade LDO on the tension between softer 2025 performance and the 2Q26 buyback optionality.