An honest look at liquid staking and liquid staking tokens

banshee

Contributor
Hey guys,
We're all seeing the articles popping left and right about 'low risk, high reward', 'the benefits of liquid staking', 'the pros of liquid staking' and so on written to boost traffic to DeFi protocols like Lido, Ankr and the likes but I'd really like to read anything - an opinion, a thread, a post, etc - that was not written by a content marketing team. At this point, all the superlatives are just having an opposite effect on my opinion about liquid staking, to be honest. It's 'all good, with none of the bad'.

Thoughts on liquid staking? Is it really as amazing as they make it out to be? Personally, I'm wary of locking 'real' tokens in a smart contract or a pool to then receive 'equivalent' liquid staking tokens that 'are just as good as the real thing' and then use them across other DEXs/pools/whatever provided they support the LS token in a pair or pay a rather exorbitant fee on MY own staked tokens if I have the audacity to decide to unstake them. Kinda reminds me of what banks do with customers' funds, tbh.

So, is liquid staking the bomb or is it another ploy to redirect crypto holders' tokens away from users and towards several protocols/companies for the benefit of the latter?

edit: I understand how content marketing works, guys. I am not trying to badmouth any protocol/platform or product, so I implore anyone who feels their brand is personally attacked in this post to simply move along. I am NOT interested in your salary-backed opinion about how great liquid staking is - this is already 99.9% of the narrative online. I get it, in your opinion, it's the best thing since sliced bread. Just please, common crypto users/holders with real opinions and experience.

Thank you!
 
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