Exploring Lido's Impact on Ethereum's Decentralization

Danny Ryan is a coordinator at the Ethereum Foundation. He’s been on Bankless many times before. Usually, we’re talking about the Ethereum roadmap and what’s coming next. This time we’re talking about something different…a risk to Ethereum that Danny sees. A little over a year ago, Danny wrote a blog post titled “The Risk of LSDs”... discussing the various risk vectors that a dominant LSD presents to Ethereum…even naming Lido specifically in the process. 

------ ✨ DEBRIEF | Ryan & David unpacking the episode: https://www.bankless.com/debrief-danny-ryan 

------ A lot of people have decided that liquid staking with Lido is the place to do it. At the time of recording Lido has over 30% of all staked Ether. Does this present a systemic risk to Ethereum?

We did an episode called, “In Defense of Lido” with researcher Hasu who argued that Lido does not pose a systemic risk to Ethereum. In fact, Lido’s dominance is better than many other alternatives. We left that conversation half-finished when we published it in August 2023. 

In today’s episode, we cover part two of that debate with Ethereum researcher and guest Danny Ryan who argues the opposite. Lido is a systemic risk to Ethereum and what to do about it.

We believe our role as podcasters for issues like this is to voice both sides of the argument in long-form conversations and healthy debate. It is exactly the kind of thing you don’t get on Twitter. That’s why we’ve given voice to both sides of this issue. 

We think there are good actors who care about this ecosystem at Lido and in the broader Ethereum community and we’re sure this episode won’t be the last word on this subject.

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------ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro 7:41 Is Lido a Threat to Ethereum 8:57  Blog Post Thinking Change? 19:30 Uniswap 21:20 Theoretical Main Risks 25:45 God Mode  27:20 Practical Main Risks 34:00 Hasu Counter-Arguments  38:25 Permissionless Validator Set Mitigation 42:30 Veto Power Mitigation Argument 46:55 How Likely is the Lido Risk? 51:26 Client Team Positioning  55:00 How Special is the Lido Case?  57:45 One LST Inevitability   1:02:30 Solutions  1:06:55 Profit Maximization  1:09:00 Action Steps For Ethereum Decentralization  1:11:53 Can Ethereum Devs Do Something?  1:20:10 Hasu Questions Answered by Danny  1:22:45 Magnitude of the Lido Threat 1:24:20 How Can Lido Fix This?  1:25:59 Stick & Carrot for Lido 1:26:27 Silverlining of Lido Threat 1:29:05 Next Conversations  1:32:16 Closing & Disclaimers  

----- RESOURCES

Danny Ryan https://twitter.com/dannyryan  

Danny Ryan Blog Post https://notes.ethereum.org/@djrtwo/risks-of-lsd  

Hasu’s Bankless Interview https://youtu.be/IfuUdIblfrY  

----- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures