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Lido / Safety
Safety review

How safe is Lido,
really?

Instead of a vague 'trusted' badge, we grade Lido on five concrete, checkable criteria — each with sources. Here's exactly how it scores.

Grade
B
4 of 5 checks passed
Computed automatically from public data. Higher is safer.
The five checks

Criterion by criterion, with sources

5 criteria · check each one
  • ✗
    Regulation

    Decentralized protocol, not a licensed entity — there is no regulator or custodian to appeal to. Legitimacy rests on audits and on-chain transparency instead of regulation. Source →

  • ✓
    Proof-of-Reserves

    Fully on-chain. Staked ETH and every validator position are publicly verifiable; an oracle reports balances every 24 hours. Source →

  • ✓
    Flexible withdrawal

    stETH is the most liquid LST — exit instantly on the open market, or unstake natively via the withdrawal queue (typically 1–5 days). Source →

  • ✓
    Insurance Fund

    Internal slashing insurance fund (protocol fees held in stETH), with optional external cover via Nexus Mutual / Unslashed. Source →

  • ✓
    Track record (2+ years incident-free)

    No smart-contract exploit since 2020. The June 2022 stETH discount was a liquidity event (it recovered), and minor slashing incidents were covered — cumulative losses under 0.01% of TVL. Source →

Bottom line

Verdict

⚖️
Verdict. Lido passes 4 of 5 safety checks (grade B) — among the safer venues we track. No platform is risk-free: keep only what you can afford to lose on any single one, and prefer flexible over locked products.
Full Lido rates → How we grade