Liquid staking turned proof-of-stake from a commitment into a composable piece of infrastructure. Before Lido, staking ETH meant locking it up for an indefinite period and earning roughly 3-5% annualized yield. After Lido, you could stake ETH, receive stETH, use that stETH as collateral in Aave or Morpho to borrow stablecoins, and still collect the underlying staking yield while doing it.
That single primitive — the liquid staking receipt token — is why the sector grew from zero to a top-ten category by market cap in roughly two years.
The Top Tier
- Lido (LDO / stETH) — the dominant protocol, often criticised for capturing too large a share of ETH staking (roughly 25-30% at various points). stETH is the de facto standard LST on Ethereum.
- Rocket Pool (RPL / rETH) — the decentralised alternative, with permissionless node operation and a smaller but more ideologically committed holder base.
- Jito (JTO / JitoSOL) — Solana’s dominant LST, grew alongside the Solana DeFi comeback in 2023-2024.
- Binance (WBETH) — centralised LST backed by Binance’s own staking service. Easier UX, centralised counterparty.
- Coinbase (cbETH) — same model, US-regulated equivalent.
- Mantle (mETH / cmETH) — Mantle Network’s LST, with a higher yield profile than most.
There is a long tail of smaller LSTs too: Swell, Stader, ether.fi (which also has a restaking angle), Frax Ether, Kelp. Most of them are listed in the table above.
Why the Sector Matters
Two reasons. First, liquid staking is the single biggest use case for ETH besides “hold it” — over 30% of all circulating ETH is staked, and the majority of that goes through liquid staking protocols. That makes Lido in particular one of the most economically important protocols on Ethereum.
Second, LSTs are the base layer for restaking and the broader “modular yield” thesis. EigenLayer’s entire premise is that LSTs exist, so restaking has a liquid primitive to work with. Without Lido there is no EigenLayer. Without EigenLayer the entire 2024 AVS ecosystem does not exist.
How to Use This Page
Sort the table by market cap to see the ranking. The differences between LSTs matter more than they look — stETH, rETH and cbETH have different fee structures, different validator sets, and different degrees of decentralisation. If you are considering holding an LST for yield, our proof-of-stake guide and the staking glossary entry cover the basics.
For the restaking side, see the restaking sector. For the broader DeFi context, the DeFi sector is where LSTs are most heavily used as collateral. The compare tool lets you stack two or three LSTs against each other on market cap and TVL.
Data below is live and refreshes every few minutes from CoinGecko.