Lido wants to reduce its contributor teams’ workforce by 15%

Lido plans to cut costs and reduce its workforce by 15%, according to an X post by Vasiliy Shapovalov, the protocol’s co-founder.

In the post, Shapovalov said that Lido Labs, Lido Ecosystem, and Lido Alliance would downsize their contributor teams, resulting in a 15% reduction in total workforce. He clarified that the decision was about saving costs. He wrote:

“This decision was about costs — not performance. It affects incredibly talented people who helped shape the protocol and community.”

Shapovalov acknowledged that downsizing contributor teams may seem counterintuitive given market conditions—especially after Ethereum (ETH) nearly reached its primary psychological barrier of $4,000. However, he clarified that the move will sustain growth and realign priorities for Lido (LDO) token holders.

He said, “Lido is building for the decades ahead — and this change helps reinforce that foundation.”

Source: Vasiliy Shapovalov via X.

Lido earned $41.56 million during the year

Lido has collected $44.68 million in revenue this year. The staking protocol received $446.76 million in fees, and incentives stood at $3.12 million, resulting in total earnings of $41.56 million.

DeFiLlama also reports Lido’s annual operational expenses. The DAO has 83 people on its payroll, with salaries totaling 2,400 ETH (about $8.384 million). Operational expenses are similar, at 2,424 ETH (about $8.449 million). However, these figures reflect the DAO’s 2022 budget.

Lido’s earnings for this year exceed the protocol’s budget by 147%

At the time of writing, Lido’s total value locked (TVL) stands at $31.323 billion, ranking it second after Aave. The DeFi protocol is deployed on seven chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Base, Gnosis Chain, Unichain, and Soneium. DeFiLlama shows that 99.96% of Lido’s TVL resides on the Ethereum network.

Lido Labs is not the only DeFi company that has decided to reduce its workforce. Last month, Eigen Labs let go of 29 employees, resulting in a 25% reduction in its workforce.

The decision was not driven by cost savings but rather to refocus on building EigenCloud, a decentralized cloud platform. Sreeram Kannan, Eigen Labs founder, shared his plans on X and said, “Today is one of the hardest days we’ve had at Eigen Labs … This morning, I shared plans for a restructuring of the company, streamlining our operations, and concentrating our efforts on building and scaling EigenCloud. Unfortunately, this means saying goodbye to brilliant colleagues.”