Lido Staking: How to Stake ETH Step by Step
Lido lets you stake any amount of ETH and receive stETH, a token that keeps earning rewards. Here is how Lido staking works, what it costs, and how to unstake.
What Is Lido Staking?
Lido is a liquid staking protocol. You deposit ETH, Lido stakes it with professional validators, and you receive stETH in return. Your stETH balance grows every day as staking rewards arrive.
The appeal is that you skip the two hard parts of staking Ethereum yourself. There is no 32 ETH minimum, which at today’s price of roughly $1,969 per ETH would mean committing about $63,000. And there is no hardware to run.
Lido is the largest staking protocol on Ethereum by a wide margin. Coin Bureau’s 2026 review puts it at roughly 9.17 million ETH staked, around $19.4 billion, or about 23% of all staked ETH on the network.
How Lido Staking Works
The flow has four moving parts.
- You deposit ETH into Lido’s staking contract from your own wallet. Any amount works.
- Lido pools deposits and distributes them across a set of vetted node operators who run the actual validators.
- You receive stETH at a 1:1 ratio to your deposit. Hold 2 ETH worth of stETH, and Lido is staking 2 ETH on your behalf.
- Rewards arrive daily through a process called rebasing. Your stETH balance number goes up on its own. You do not claim anything.
You never hand over custody. The stETH sits in your wallet, and the deposit contract is what holds the staked ETH. That is the difference between Lido and staking on an exchange, where the exchange holds the keys.
Before You Start
Three things to have in place.
A self-custody wallet. MetaMask, Rabby, Rainbow, or a hardware wallet like Ledger or Trezor connected through one of them. See the wallets guide if you do not have one yet.
ETH on Ethereum mainnet. Not on an L2, not on an exchange. If your ETH sits on Coinbase or Kraken, withdraw it to your wallet first.
Extra ETH for gas. The staking transaction is a mainnet transaction, so you pay gas fees. Keep a small buffer beyond what you plan to stake. This is also why staking $30 of ETH rarely makes sense: gas can eat a year of rewards on a position that small.
How to Stake ETH with Lido
The whole process takes about three minutes.
Step 1: Go to the real Lido site. The staking app lives at stake.lido.fi. Type the address yourself or use a bookmark. Fake Lido sites bought through search ads are a known problem, and connecting a wallet to one can cost you everything in it.
Step 2: Connect your wallet. Click Connect Wallet, pick your provider, and approve the connection request. A connection request is not a transaction and never asks for your seed phrase. If anything asks for those words, close the tab.
Step 3: Enter an amount. Type how much ETH you want to stake. The interface shows the current APR and the amount of stETH you will receive, which will match your ETH almost exactly.
Step 4: Confirm the transaction. Your wallet pops up with the gas estimate. Review the amount, confirm, and wait for the transaction to land. It usually takes under a minute.
Step 5: Check your balance. stETH should appear in your wallet. If it does not show automatically, add the token contract manually. Your balance will start ticking up the following day.
That is it. There is nothing to maintain and nothing to claim.
stETH vs wstETH
Lido issues two versions of the same position, and beginners get tripped up by this constantly.
| stETH | wstETH | |
|---|---|---|
| Balance | Grows daily (rebasing) | Fixed number of tokens |
| Value per token | Stays near 1 ETH | Rises over time |
| Best for | Holding, simplicity | DeFi protocols, some L2s |
| Rewards | Visible as balance increases | Visible as price increases |
Both represent the same staked ETH. stETH shows your rewards as a bigger balance. wstETH shows them as a higher price per token.
Use plain stETH if you are just holding. Wrap to wstETH if you want to use the position as collateral on a lending market or bridge it to an L2, since many contracts handle a fixed balance more reliably than a rebasing one. Wrapping and unwrapping is a one-click function in the Lido app, and it is the same idea as WETH wrapping ETH for compatibility.
What You Actually Earn
Lido takes 10% of your staking rewards, not 10% of your deposit. According to Lido’s protocol fee documentation, the cut on the main curated module splits evenly, 5% to the node operators running the validators and 5% to the DAO treasury. The fee is applied automatically during the daily rebase, and it is waived entirely during periods when penalties exceed rewards.
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Ethereum base staking yield | ~2.7% to 3.2% |
| Lido fee | 10% of rewards |
| Your net APR | ~2.5% |
| Minimum deposit | None |
| Lock-up | None, but unstaking takes days |
The 2.5% figure is what Coin Bureau recorded in March 2026. Staking yields have fallen steadily since 2023 because rewards get spread across a larger pool of staked ETH, so treat every published APR as a snapshot. The live number in the Lido app is the only one that matters at the moment you deposit.
Rewards are paid in ETH terms, not dollars. Earning 2.5% on your ETH while ETH itself drops 30% still leaves you down in dollars. Staking is a yield on the asset, not protection from the asset’s price.
How to Unstake
Getting back to ETH has two routes, and the right one depends on whether you are in a hurry.
Route 1: Withdraw through Lido. Go to the Withdrawals tab, request a withdrawal, and your stETH gets locked in a first-in-first-out queue. Per Lido’s withdrawals FAQ, the wait is usually 1 to 5 days, depending on the size of the queue, how fast validators can exit, and how much ETH sits in Lido’s buffer. When it is ready, you return to the Claim tab and claim your ETH at a 1:1 rate. Two important details: the claim is manual, and your stETH stops earning rewards the moment you request the withdrawal.
Route 2: Swap on a DEX. Sell stETH for ETH on Uniswap or Curve and the trade settles in one transaction. You pay gas plus whatever slippage the liquidity pool charges, and in a panic that discount can widen considerably.
Use the queue when you can wait. Use a DEX when you cannot.
Is Lido Staking Safe?
Safe from theft under normal conditions, yes. Risk-free, no. Four things can actually cost you money.
Smart contract risk. Your ETH is held by code. Lido has run since 2020 across billions in deposits without a protocol-level loss, and it is heavily audited, but audits reduce risk rather than remove it.
Depeg risk. stETH should trade at about 1 ETH, and usually does. In June 2022 it fell to roughly 0.94 ETH during the Celsius and Three Arrows Capital collapse, because withdrawals did not exist yet and forced sellers dumped on the open market. It recovered completely. Anyone who sold at the bottom did not.
Slashing. If node operators misbehave or go offline, the network penalizes them and the loss passes through to stakers. Spreading stake across many operators limits the blast radius, and Lido has never had a slashing event large enough to matter to an ordinary depositor.
Centralization. One protocol controlling roughly a quarter of all staked ETH is a live debate in the Ethereum community. Ethereum.org’s staking pool documentation encourages stakers to consider smaller providers for the health of the network. Rocket Pool is the usual alternative for people who care about this.
Add one more that is not Lido’s fault: phishing. Fake staking sites and fake “stETH migration” pop-ups are everywhere. Lido will never ask for your recovery phrase, and no legitimate protocol ever will. The crypto scams guide covers the patterns.
This is general education, not financial advice. Staking rewards are not guaranteed and staked ETH can lose value.
Is Lido Staking Good? How It Compares
| Lido | Rocket Pool | Coinbase staking | Solo validator | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Any amount | Any amount | Any amount | 32 ETH |
| Fee on rewards | 10% | 5% to 20% node commission | 25% | None |
| Net APR | ~2.5% | ~2.5% to 3% | ~2% | ~3.1% to 3.3% |
| Your keys | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Usable in DeFi | Widest support | Good | Limited | No |
| Decentralization | Curated operators | Permissionless nodes | Single company | Best possible |
Lido wins on liquidity and integration. stETH is accepted almost everywhere in DeFi, which matters if you plan to use the position as collateral rather than just hold it.
Rocket Pool is the better pick if decentralization is your priority, since anyone can run a node rather than being invited onto a curated list. Solo staking pays the most and helps the network the most, if you have 32 ETH and can keep a machine online.
What Changed in 2026
Lido shipped V3 on mainnet this year, introducing stVaults, which let institutions and larger operators run customized staking setups while still minting stETH. Coinspeaker reported the rollout across Ethereum and Linea.
None of this changes the beginner path. Deposit ETH, get stETH, hold it. stVaults is infrastructure aimed at professional stakers, not a new step you need to learn.
The Bottom Line
Lido staking is the lowest-friction way to earn Ethereum staking rewards. No minimum, no hardware, roughly 2.5% net APR, and a token you can use elsewhere while it earns.
You are paying for that convenience with a 10% fee on rewards and exposure to smart contract risk. For someone holding ETH long term who wants it working rather than idle, that is a reasonable trade. Just bookmark the real site, keep your recovery phrase offline, and remember the unstaking queue takes days.
Related Reading
- What Is Liquid Staking? the concept behind stETH, rETH, and cbETH
- Ethereum Staking Guide solo, pooled, and exchange staking compared
- What Is Proof of Stake? what your ETH is actually securing
- What Is WETH? the other wrapper token you will meet
- Crypto Wallets Explained where your stETH lives
- Ethereum Gas Fees Explained what the staking transaction costs
- Is Ethereum a Scam? how to spot fake staking sites
