Liquid Buybacks: NEST execution with LDO/wstETH liquidity

Proposals
73

Thanks for getting back,

Few points to add from my side that raises concerns (I don’t make allegations just open the discussion)

  • holders with large stake are governing the dao treasury, presumably there are the same people from labs that are receiving grands to build the protocol (especially with 25% of mcap budget allocated) it raises concerns on interest alignment and real treasury ownership.
  • With this conservation of power on tokens and treasury, others are just left behind without any say or protocol value (large holders control the treasury)
  • Obviously community or entity can (or should) buy more tokens to change that dynamic but for now the approach shows signficant and long term token destruction.
  • I don’t mean we should distribute all the revenue and destroy the long terms vision of the protocol but holders excl top5 who which doesn’t get money from treasury should be involved in protocol success.
  • Considering DUNA registration with giving some legal share of the company to holders would satisfy most request.

LDO currently perceived (not saying it’s how it is) as a tool for top 5 holders to grant themselves 60m annual cash injection.

To add a point to my concerns I’m A top20 Holder

4 Likes
80

@Leuts @Lanski @polar as few biggest public delegates in lido dao it would be great to hear your thoughts and feedback on this hot and widely discussed topic both on twitter and forum.

1 Like
81

Hi there, i’ve made my point clear in many other posts in the forum. Focus should be on growth. I am an advocate for dual token systems like ve (not necessarily a 4 year curve), I think NEST is a good start although it’s evident the market doesn’t agree.

3 Likes
82

Thanks for the response, but it doesn’t address the core issue.

LDO governs a treasury — but that’s not real value for holders. The token still has no meaningful value capture: no yield, no direct link to protocol success, no strong rights.

Buybacks don’t fix this. They’re a weak, indirect mechanism — not a fundamental token model.

If large holders already control decisions, then “holder alignment” isn’t real decentralization.

The main question remains:
why hold LDO when ETH or stETH offer clearer and stronger economics?

Until there’s a clear answer, the market is correctly pricing LDO as a weak token on top of a strong protocol.

2 Likes
84

This is wrong.

Token holders do have power over the protocol and fee switch.

To add a new staking module or update it with new fees, full governance flow required, hence controlled by LDO holders. That can be validated here: core/contracts/0.8.9/StakingRouter.sol at cca04b42123735714d8c60a73c2f7af949e989db · lidofinance/core · GitHub

Feel free to use otf.aragon.org and under Lido you will explicitly see what the LDO token controls and doesn’t.

85

For people still complaint about the price, LDO just vote paper, no linked directly or get any benefit from protocol revenue. So even ETH reach 100.000$ the benefit to LDO holder is 0 until now.

86

I don’t see value in this comment, moving on.

87

just tell the truth base on current tokenomics, may be useful for people who didn’t aware about the situition

88

I understand why LDO holders are concerned about price performance. The trend in this thread seems to be that revshare with LDO holders would be the solution.

In my view there are two separate questions.

1. The case for NEST / liquid buybacks
NEST is a mechanism that should remove LDO from circulation and following the laws of economics, all things being equal, less supply would mean an increase in price.

Thing is… market conditions suck and conditions for NEST to trigger seem far away. So we are left with a mechanism that doesn’t trigger in bear markets. But wait… this is by design:

Screenshot 2026-03-23 at 09.26.02
Screenshot 2026-03-23 at 09.26.02803×493 64 KB

So there is a logic behind NEST, but in times like now, where the execution seems far away and the action happens very far away from the realm of even considering triggering NEST, we might need to find another mechanism that supports LDO price to address the concerns that holders are losing USD denominated value.

2. The practicality of alternative value-accrual mechanisms

In principle, I understand the appeal of mechanisms that give LDO a more explicit economic utility. I’m simplifying a lot, but let’s say that we still maintain the revenue >40M. We want to maintain this because we want to make sure we can continue operations, and reinvest in the protocol growth. If we spend all revenue by giving away to LDO holders… duh, we eat today but we’re burning the protocol to the ground and we’ll be hungry tomorrow.

So, maintaining this >40M revenue, looking at the report: GOOSE-2025 & EGGs-2025 Final Report that’d give us… 0.5M.

These mechanisms (like LDO staking) are not cheap to design, implement, govern and maintain, so we would probably end up spending way too many resources implementing it for a meagre distribution that would make nobody happy anyway. In summary, the juice is not worth the squeeze.

EVEN if it was free to implement, or we did direct distributions to LDO holders (just airdrop stETH), it would be not a lot of money for individuals and we would be depriving the DAO from treasury that it might need to survive, grow and get better.

It’s normal to feel like everything is going to shit, portfolios are red, we’re down bad… but trying to maxx extract from one of the DAOs that have proven solid, with product and will weather the storm and grow could prove very short-sighted.

3 Likes
89

You managed to build mechanisms for ETH and USD, but for LDO it suddenly becomes “too hard”? Very convenient logic.

So the simple question is: what is LDO even for?
If the token gets no real value capture, no meaningful support, and no direct benefit from protocol growth, then it’s just a governance wrapper with no substance.

All the talk about “bad timing,” “high implementation cost,” and “protecting the treasury” sounds like an excuse.
The DAO has had no problem extracting value across the ecosystem, but when it comes to LDO holders, there is always no mechanism, no priority, and no will.

If the token is denied any real economic role, people are absolutely justified in seeing it as a slow rug on holders.

1 Like
90

Actually LDO just token to vote, so it is not asset to invest because there is no yield
so if you are investor, at the time you decide to buy you should know that it like donor to charity. Because when the big holders mean who want get vote power hold enough vote powers, they dont care about fdv or pricing anymore.

So, only retails in the pool, when retrailer become smarter, and realized LDO just vote ticket which is useless because even you buy all the pool, you still dont have enough vote power to rule any decide.

That time no one needed it anymore, the late commers because exit liquid.

1 Like
91

honestly but when TVL increase, revenue increase, holders get nothing
but when TVL down, protocol hacked or collapsed, holders is the first frontline to be rekt
:rofl:

1 Like
92

I think we need to be honest, it’s not going to shit it is shit and Ldo is among the worst performers for many years. Instead of short term extraction we have long term destruction.

Market share down from 33% to 22%

LDO down from 4$ to 0.2$

Staked eth down from 9.8 to 9.1 eth

Treasury spend 100+m in last 3years and results of this spend is represented on the metrics.

We should be honest and accept what we have and think how to change all 4 points.

2 Likes
93

Just as a senior wage cuck, I would assume everyone should be fired for constant underperformance. But fortunately it’s a dao and not a real business

2 Likes
94

If NEST v1 has been technically ready since December, what exactly is blocking a Snapshot vote today?
The community needs a clear deadline, not another delay pushed into Q2 2026.

4 Likes
Utilizing Market Opportunities: stETH / LDO trade