While staked Ethereum withdrawals are now live with the recent successful Shapella upgrade, the hurdles to solo stake ETH still remain

and liquid staking platforms have not lost their relevance for the average user who just wants to earn that sweet yield on their ETH.

With the wars ever-ongoing, there are a growing number of liquid staking platforms you can try, but for today we’ll focus on the largest one - Lido.

Without further ado, here’s how you can start earning yield with Lido’s stETH token!

First up, you’ll need a web3 wallet to begin, and for this video we’ll be using Metamask. We’ll assume you already have that installed, and if you haven’t we have a video on that which we’ll link in the description below.

Fund your account with some ETH if you haven’t already. Now, head over to lido.fi and as usual double check you’re on their official website. Scroll down and you’ll see Ethereum here under Lido’s supported networks.

You’ll see that it’s currently offering a 5% APR, though note that this would fluctuate. Click on ‘Stake now’. Connect your wallet as you would with any dApp, And now you’ll be able to see your available ETH balance to stake. Key in the amount of ETH you want to convert into stETH and then click on submit. Make sure you leave enough ETH in your wallet to cover gas fees. Speaking of, as you’re doing this on the eth mainnet, be mindful of when congestion usually happens which can cause gas prices to spike. If all’s good, confirm your transaction and voila, you’ll receive stETH tokens in your wallet at a 1:1 ratio. Now, before we tell you what you can do with your stETH, we’d just like to quickly give a shoutout to our sponsor, Undeads Metaverse, which is a triple A, zombie-themed MMORPG survival game which unfolds in a post-apocalyptic metaverse built on Ethereum. To reward those jumping into the ecosystem early, the project is currently offering bonus incentives - such as NFTs, exclusive access to their discord channel, a chance to win over 1 ETH or cashback on your mint cost, and exclusive merch - all for the very reasonable minting cost of $140 at the time of shooting. Scroll down to our description box and click on the link to start minting! This may be a little counterintuitive but another simple method to obtain and start earning with stETH is to simply buy stETH from a DEX like Curve or 1inch. The only difference is that you won’t receive stETH at an exact 1:1 ratio with ETH, and buying from a DEX should typically incur higher fees than getting it from Lido directly. Though, if you see that the price of stETH has deviated substantially lower than ETH, it may be worth buying it on a DEX if you believe that you will be able to redeem ETH on a 1:1 basis from Lido when withdrawals are live. However, this arbitrage opportunity is pretty sure to disappear once withdrawals go live. In case you needed a refresher, Lido’s stETH token is essentially pegged 1:1 with ETH, and represents your claim on your ETH which will be staked by Lido validators behind the scenes, plus your accrued staking rewards after it is split amongst the validator and the Lido DAO. You will receive your staking rewards in real time, and this will be reflected in your stETH balance in your wallet which is updated daily and increases over time. Just a note that due to the token’s design, you will not see this balance rebasing as a transaction in your wallet history. Now that you’ve got your stETH, there might be one last step before you can start earning yield on it. While you can use stETH directly on some DeFi protocols, many only work with tokens that have constant balances, and so require a wrapped version of stETH, wstETH instead. wstETH is compatible with all Ethereum DeFi protocols as its balance is fixed. It uses a share system which keeps track of your increasing stETH balance, and returns you the correct amount of stETH when you unwrap it. Now, with either stETH or wstETH, you’re free to use it in Lido’s sprawling ecosystem of integrated DeFi dApps, such as Curve, 1inch, Aave, Sushiswap, and many, many more. You can even bridge your wstETH over to L2s like Arbitrum or Optimism to explore similar yield farming and DeFi opportunities without taking on high gas fees. There you have it, your beginner’s guide to Lido and stETH.

The process to use other liquid staking platforms like Rocketpool or Frax will be largely similar, though leave a comment if you would like a tutorial for those too! If you want to know about the top liquid staking platforms, check out our video on that right here.

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