📝 Editor's Note:

Welcome to OurNetwork's latest. This issue focuses on the liquid staking space and covers some of its most significant protocols. A big shoutout to mar1na, Hayden Tsutsui, Chaos Labs, Melissa Nelson, Seoul Data Labs, YASMIN, and Eduardo Rigon for contributing.

Let's get into it.

– ON Editorial Team

Lido | Jito | Ether.fi | Liquid Collective | JupSOL | BeraPaw

• Amid weakening dominance in the staking sector, Lido still remains Ethereum’s juggernaut. It leads the LST space with 8.7M ETH staked, and is head to head with Aave (9M ETH locked) in the battle to be the top DeFi protocol. Yet a changing staking space and growing staked ETH outflows have contributed to market share loss for Lido, down from 26% to 24% in the past 3 months. This is an ongoing downtrend since late 2023, after Lido had brushed close to the critical threshold of one third staked ETH and roused urgent centralization concerns.

• Participation in Lido underwent a shock in July. An ETH liquidity crunch impaired a popular Lido stETH earn strategy on Aave. stETH faced a selloff and temporary depeg, and a spike in unstake volume that increased the withdrawal wait by a factor of 20. Neither Lido’s nor overall Ethereum unstake queue fully recovered.

• In search of diversity, the past six months saw growing staking competition. Ether.fi, Binance (wBETH), Kiln and Figment showed 20-60% respective gains in staked ETH for this period. Lido made competitive bids in return, from cost cutting, to innovation including Lido Earn and the upcoming V3 release.

• JitoSOL leverages a novel onchain programmatic stake delegation protocol: StakeNet stores key validator history, and the Steward Program rebalances stake across ~200 validators based on validator history and criteria that optimizes higher performance and low commissions. This improves Solana's performance and decentralization, increases the amount of revenue distributed to stakers, automatically and transparently diversifying delegation risks across a set of highly qualified validators.

• JitoSOL has the most liquid onchain markets amongst LSTs on Solana, totaling roughly $90M in TVL across all JitoSOL pools (just over $60M in paired reserves). 7-day trailing trading volumes are $340M.

• Deep and liquid market structures afford lower slippage (or price impact) for JitoSOL holders trading in large sizes relative to other LSTs, making JitoSOL a prime candidate for institutions. Median slippage on $1M and $10M is 2 basis points and 3.5 basis points, respectively.

• Ether.fi continues to lead the liquid restaking sector (LRT) sector with dominant ecosystem traction. Currently, its flagship LRT, weETH/eETH, saw supply reach almost 2.9M ETH, reinforcing its role as a prominent staked ETH collateral. Over 230K wallets hold Ether.fi products across chains. Ethereum leads with over 130K wallets. Arbitrum is next with 64K wallets. And Linea has almost 18K wallets holding Ether.fi tokens.

• Aave dominates with 2.01M ETH in TVL, but there's consistent growth across other ecosystems: Spark is pulling meaningful flow having reached 115K ETH vs 21.K in May). Protocols like Zircuit (43.22K ETH) and Euler (9.4K ETH) are also emerging as venues for Ether.fi's LRTs.

• Decentralized exchange TVL averages between 40K and 80K ETH across weETH and ETH in pools, highlighting consistent crosschain liquidity. Liquidity is spread across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and Unichain, reflecting weETH’s adoption across execution layers. Volumes show stable accumulation and deployment patterns.

• Liquid Collective is an institutional-grade liquid staking protocol designed for enterprise compliance and security, a focus which has positioned it to capture significant inbound stake from the emerging corporate treasury sector. Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) inflows have contributed to a 231% surge in LsETH’s TVL over the last six months, as companies adopt LsETH for a liquid, multi-operator, onchain staking solution to make their ETH holdings productive.

• SharpLink Gaming’s LsETH wallet holdings, as identified by Arkham, demonstrate the draw of holding LsETH over raw ETH for DATs. Because LsETH is a reward-bearing cToken, while SBET’s LsETH holdings have held steady since July 14, their redeemable ETH value has increased by 16.4% over that same time.

• Mainnet wallets holding LsETH grew by 29.25% in the last six months, demonstrating growing adoption overall. Cohort analysis shows institutional dominance in volume, but retail holders represent the majority. 83.9% of wallets hold less than 10 LsETH while deposits of 1,000+ ETH represent over 94% of ETH staked.

• JupSOL is Jupiter's liquid staking token. With 5.1M circulating JupSOL, the circulating supply has increased by 106% year-over-year and market cap has grown 274% along with SOL price appreciation. With these metrics, JupSOL has rapidly ascended to become the third ranking LST on Solana following JitoSOL and bnSOL. Despite a significant market cap gap with the top 2 LSTs, JupSOL's growth signals strong adoption momentum.

• JupSOL's staking infrastructure relies on a concentrated validator set — Jupiter's validator controls 81.9% of the 5.8M SOL stake with Watchtower (9.6%) and Temporal Emerald (8.6%) as minority validators. This structure enables operational control while minority validators provide diversification.

• Nearly two-thirds of JupSOL's circulating supply is actively deployed in DeFi: 49% sits in Kamino reserves while another 14% is utilized in Jupiter Lend. This high utilization demonstrates strong product-market fit within Solana's DeFi ecosystem.

• Benqi, Avalanche's premier liquid staking protocol, has achieved record-breaking growth in the last two months, pushing the total liquid-staked AVAX (sAVAX) to its all-time high. This surge has resulted in a net total of over 16.6M AVAX ($423M) being secured by the platform. Backed by a solid 5.05% APR, the average staking volume in July-August 2025 has been 3-4 times higher than any previous period, signaling a massive new wave of capital inflow.

• Benqi's user conviction is high, with 95,053 unique stakers vs. only 8,121 unstakers. This 11.7-to-1 ratio signals strong holder confidence and a preference for yield generation over selling.

• Benqi shows a healthy growth model, attracting new users while retaining its core base. In 2025, new stakers consistently account for 35-40% of all activity, demonstrating a strong balance of user acquisition and retention.

• BeraPaw is a liquid staking protocol for BGT, Berachain's governance token. In under six months, the LST provider generated over $1.8M in revenue, minted over 2M LBGT (the project's LST), and holds a top 2 position in BGT. BeraPaw abstracts Proof of Liquidity (PoL) and simplifies user operations, providing liquid staking solutions that optimize yield across Berachain with LBGT and pBERA.

• From March to the present, BeraPaw has grown from 0 to over 8,000 holders, including LBGT and stLBGT holders. Supported by strategic ecosystem partnerships, this rapid adoption reflects strong community trust and highlights BeraPaw’s leadership in liquid staking and DeFi on Berachain.

• stLBGT automatically compounds incentives, increasing from 1 to 2.67 LBGT in value since launch. Peak staking occurred in July with over 740K LBGT staked. The protocol currently holds a TVL of $2.25M, representing approximately 360K tokens, underscoring strong adoption and confidence in BeraPaw.