Key Takeaways
Lido DAO voted 57.4 million LDO to revoke canonical wstETH bridge endpoints on nine networks, retreating from a multichain expansion that grew too costly to maintain after the KelpDAO exploit stressed staking liquidity.
Lido DAO voted 57.4 million LDO to revoke the canonical status of wstETH bridge endpoints on nine networks, consolidating resources after the April KelpDAO incident exposed the risks of maintaining official bridges across a sprawling L2 and sidechain ecosystem. The Snapshot vote closed June 22 with 57.4 million LDO in favor and 122 opposed, per Lido's governance forum.
"The multichain sprawl created operational overhead that outweighed the benefits of being everywhere," Maya Sinclair, analyst at Crypto Daily, said. "The NEC guardrails feel like a pragmatic response to constant L2 churn."
The affected networks are zkSync Era, Mode, Scroll, Mantle, Swell, Zircuit, Soneium, Polygon PoS and Lisk, according to Lido's June 23 blog post. The Network Expansion Committee now holds authority to perform similar revocations, requiring unanimous consent and a public forum post explaining each decision. The move follows the April KelpDAO exploit, which released roughly 116,500 rsETH valued at about $292 million at the time. Lido's liquidity analysis published June 24 showed that for a $1 million fixed-sell wstETH quote, median daily price impact across 236 observations was minus 1.6 basis points. Pre-exploit, the median sat near minus 0.1 basis points. During the 10-day stress window, median impact widened to minus 5.0 basis points, with the seven-day moving average trough at minus 15.9 basis points.
The pullback reduces Lido's reputational exposure on periphery chains where bridge risk and liquidity depth are harder to monitor. Users holding wstETH on the nine networks still control their tokens, but routing and incentive structures may shift as the canonical label disappears. Protocols that relied on the designation for risk scoring may downgrade support or require additional wrappers and oracles. For LDO holders, the decision signals a trade-off: conservative stewardship around staking collateral at the expense of footprint on fast-growing networks where competing liquid staking tokens such as Rocket Pool's rETH or StakeWise's sETH2 could gain traction. The NEC's new authority, constrained by unanimity and public disclosure, allows faster pruning without requiring a full DAO vote each time — but also concentrates decision-making in a smaller group. The next test will be whether core L2s maintain deep wstETH pools and clear routing, or whether fragmentation pushes users toward chain-native staking alternatives.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
