Lido to the Rescue: $20M Buyback Bets Big That LDO Isn't Dead Yet

Ethereum's leading staking platform Lido has dropped a proposal that would make even the most degened-out whale raise an eyebrow. The plan? A one-off buyback of roughly 8.5% of the LDO circulating supply, funded by 10,000 stETH from the Lido DAO Treasury. At current prices of $2,000–$2,100 per stETH, that's roughly $20–$21 million going toward buying back 70 million LDO tokens. In crypto math, that's like your grandma finally admitting she was wrong about Bitcoin—surprising, bold, and honestly kind of emotional.

Why Lido is bullish on its token

Lido's reasoning? The protocol has been crying into its ethernet-colored beer for two years now. LDO is trading at historically depressed levels relative to ETH—a juicy 70% discount that made most of 2024 and 2025 feel like a financial horror movie. They've pointed to the LDO/ETH ratio, which tracks LDO's price performance against ETH, and that ratio has hit a fresh 2026 low. Ouch. Lido's calling this more than just regular market noise; they're framing it as one of the most significant dislocations between LDO's market price and the protocol's actual fundamentals in the token's entire existence. Meanwhile, their staking dominance has actually improved, but LDO's price action has been the equivalent of watching a fish try to climb a tree—confusing and sad. The altcoin has plunged 97% from its 2024 high of $3.7 to its current pathetic low of $0.30. That's not a dip, that's a cliff.

If approved, the buyback will happen in 1K stETH batches across liquid venues like Cow Swap, 1inch, Uniswap, Binance, and whatever otherDEX is currently trendy enough to not rugged its users. The goal is avoiding slippages, because nobody wants to be that guy who accidentally moved the market while buying their own token. But here's the twist: this is separate from the automatic annual $10 million long-term buyback plan that was floated last year. That long-term draft, set to be formalized in Q2 2026, aims to activate LDO buybacks using half of the extra protocol revenue above $40 million, but only if ETH is being a good boy and trading above $3,000. Multiple hooks, multiple chances.

Collectively, these plans suggest the DeFi platform is more bullish on its native token than a Cornell professor at a Bitcoin conference. But here's the plot twist: the altcoin's rebound would need more conviction from whales, and right now those whales are basically ghosting LDO harder than your ex after you asked about their supply chain. Since the October crash, whale wallets holding 10–100 million and 100 million–1 billion LDO have offloaded nearly 80 million tokens. Unless these big fish regain confidence