Post-Merge ETH has become obsolete

For years, various blockchain projects were rumored to be future “Ethereum killers,” projects that would unseat Ether from its throne and usurp its title as the top digital asset. That day seems to have come, though it appears it was an inside job. Lido-staked Ethereum (stETH) and other liquid staking derivatives are primed to render Ether (ETH), as an asset, obsolete. 

The transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoW) allows everyday decentralized finance (DeFi) users to benefit from rewards previously reserved for miners simply by holding stETH or any other ETH liquid-staking derivative. This has given way to a wave of interest across the industry, from individuals to institutions across centralized finance (CeFi) and DeFi. In the past month, the ETH liquid staking derivatives have received a ton of attention, and titans of the industry — including Coinbase and Frax — have released ETH liquid staking derivatives.

Liquid staking derivatives offer all the benefits of regular ETH while also being a yield-generating asset. That means holders are able to gain exposure to ETH’s price action and maintain liquidity while harnessing staking benefits. Wallets holding stETH will see their holdings gradually increase as staking yields are regularly added to the initial sum.

Related: Lower costs, higher speeds after Ethereum’s Merge? Don’t count on it

While most staking strategies require locking up funds in a validator, liquid staking derivatives allow users to maintain liquidity while still benefiting from the staking yield. ETH locked up in staking validators isn’t available for withdrawal until an ambiguous time in the future, likely with the Shanghai update. While stETH still trades at a slight discount compared to ETH, this gap is expected to close permanently once withdrawals are enabled. Simply put, ETH liquid staking tokens are just more capital efficient than standard ETH or more traditional staking practices.

From a user perspective, there’s little reason to hold regular ETH, where the only potential upside would be an increase in price when they could hold a liquid staking derivative that would boost their prospective profits via staking yield. Project founders have adopted a similar mentality. From DeFi to nonfungible token (NFT) projects, teams across Web3 have integrated stETH into their protocols, with behemoths such as Curve and Aave making it even easier for DeFi users to integrate stETH into their investment…