Lido DAO proposes phased LDO buyback using 10,000 stETH from treasury

Lido’s decentralized autonomous organization has proposed a one-off buyback of its governance token to support price levels amid a prolonged downturn.

Summary

• Lido DAO has proposed a one-off buyback of up to 10,000 stETH, about $20M, to accumulate LDO amid what it calls a significant valuation gap.
• The token is trading roughly 63% below its two-year median against Ether and remains down 95.9% from its all-time high.

According to a governance proposal submitted by the Lido Ecosystem Operations team, the plan would allocate up to 10,000 stETH from the DAO’s treasury for Lido DAO to accumulate LDO (LDO). At current prices, the allocation is valued at nearly $20 million.

Framing the move as a response to mispricing, the DAO said it “represents one of the most significant dislocations between LDO’s market price and its underlying protocol fundamentals in the token’s history.”

If approved, the proposal would be executed in smaller batches of 1,000 stETH, up to a total of 10,000 stETH, with plans to use limit orders or adopt a dollar cost averaging strategy to avoid market volatility.

Token holders, however, have the right to review every tranche, as each batch would require separate approval before further execution.

Lido DAO also highlighted the LDO to ETH ratio, which it said was at “historically depressed levels,” trading at a steep discount to Ether, with its current ratio roughly 63% below its two year median.

Even though Lido remains in the top spot of the Ethereum liquid staking market with a market share of about 23%, according to Dune Analytics data, LDO price has fallen 95.9% from its $7.30 high.

Lido’s revenue has fallen

In its latest update, the protocol reported a decline of 23% to $40.5 million in 2025, but the foundation argues that core performance remains strong despite the drop in revenue.

For instance, it noted that Lido’s rewards were down approximately 20% over the same period, while its costs improved 13% year over year. Its take rate has also increased from 5% to 6.11%.

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