Lido DAO Mulls $20M LDO Buyback to Boost Token Price

Lido’s decentralized autonomous organization is considering a one-off $20 million buyback of its governance token to address so-called price dislocation, which is at “historically depressed levels” relative to Ether, according to the DAO. 

The proposal, submitted Friday, seeks permission to swap 10,000 Lido Staked Ether (stETH) tokens, currently worth $20 million from the DAO’s treasury for Lido DAO (LDO), arguing that LDO is undervalued.

“This is not a routine fluctuation. It represents one of the most significant dislocations between LDO’s market price and its underlying protocol fundamentals in the token’s history.”

A token buyback of this size could boost the price of the token, which has fallen roughly 96% from its all-time high. In November, a Lido DAO member pitched an automated buyback mechanism for LDO to improve the token’s price. However, that proposal hasn’t been implemented.

Lido DAO pointed out that LDO is trading at a steep discount to Ether (ETH) at a ratio of 0.00016, roughly 63% below its two-year median.

This is despite the protocol holding the top spot of the Ethereum liquid staking market, with a 23.2% share of staked Ether, according to Dune Analytics data. The protocol’s dominance has even been flagged as a centralization risk to the network in previous years.

Related: Ethereum builders propose ‘economic zone’ to tackle L2 fragmentation 

LDO is currently trading at $0.30, down 95.9% from its $7.30 high set in August 2021, according to CoinGecko data. LDO’s $255 million market cap makes it the 141st largest token by value at the time of writing.

“That dislocation is not justified by a proportional deterioration in protocol performance,” Lido DAO said. 

Lido DAO proposes buying stETH in batches

Lido DAO proposed buying up to 10,000 stETH in smaller batches of 1,000 to buy LDO. 

Lido DAO said it would use limit orders or adopt a dollar-cost averaging strategy to avoid market volatility.