Proposal: List LDO on a Centralized Exchange because of high fees in Defi

Proposals
1

Problem

LDO is currently only available on Defi platforms like Uniswap with ETH gas fees continue to rise making it hard for retail investors to get in early and invest in LDO. If we are to promote inclusion and providing equal opportunity to all investors, then we should provide an easy and cheap way to invest in LDO. Popular centralized exchanges are the main gateway to new and existing users due to their onboarding and relatively low fees compared to defi.

Proposal

Use some of the marketing budget or reserve to make a deal with a popular exchange like Binance, OKex or Kraken to list the LDO token on their platform. This will make it easier for people to invest in LDO and more fair.

As a bonus, LDO will gain even more popularity as regular folks will be able to purchase it from the exchange without having to worry about eth gas fees. We all know the gas fees will continue to be a problem until eth2 rolls out and maybe even then people might start using eth less due to its upcoming deflationary properties.

The downsides are that it might bring more attention than the team can handle along with more volatility, however, I think this is still worth considering. Happy to discuss further.

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Hi Krasmussen,

Thanks for bringing these points.
Can you please elaborate on the following two points:

  • Why do you think listing ldo will not bring any long term benefits? (This isn’t obvious to me)
  • Why would listing stEth bring more longterm benefits?

To me, the more exchanges list an asset/token, the more people will know about it and have access to it. How is more people having access to LDO not good for longterm?

I also like the idea of listing stETH btw.

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I can see that the listing cost may be prohibitive. I question the idea that LPs maximizing yield are any more passionate about project than exchange users. LPs who can afford to participate in the eth pools are clearly the more likely users of the stEth asset, but are they really more likely to keep the token and participate than take the profit and move to the next farm?

L2 opens some interesting possibilities for expansion of both LDO and stEth. Polygon has aave aTokens on the network, obviously the accrual mechanic doesn’t work in quite the same way, but they have found a way to peg that process. Also moving LDO to an L2 like polygon and providing liquidity to the the dexs is an interesting proposition. Most of the people would buy it for speculation and hold it on that chain. Smaller players would have access, but usually couldn’t cost effectively move it to Eth for storage. So you could increase demand without shifting much of the short term supply out of the contract that was holding it in the bridge. If the theory holds though, then that would also take those tokens out of circulation for governance.

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This is Victoria, a listing coordinator from BitMart Exchange.
We are overall ranking top 30 exchanges right now. Has over 3mil user, and daily trading volume is above 3bil.
We can help you develop the US, EU and China markets.
We are interested in Lido Dao. Could you please help me to connect with your BD team for a further discussion?
My telegram is @victoria_tech

6
  1. It’s not that LDO listing doesn’t have benefits: it’s that paying for listing doesn’t have, and has some drawbacks to boot.
  2. A good source of liquidity for stETH would help it grow into a more accepted liquid staking token, which is the outcome we’re all working for.
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