Two of the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector’s greatest identified platforms, liquid staking protocol Lido and decentralized trade Curve Finance, are contemplating slimming down.
Regardless of a current resurgence in DeFi markets, Lido co-founder Vasiliy Shapovalov introduced a 15% reduce of contributors, and a contemporary Curve governance proposal suggests slicing improvement on Layer Two (L2) networks.
As a part of efforts to make sure long-term sustainability, Lido Labs, Lido Ecosystem, and Lido Alliance have made the exhausting resolution to scale back the dimensions of their contributor groups, impacting round 15% of the workforce.
This resolution was about prices — not efficiency. It impacts…
— Vasiliy Shapovalov (@_vshapovalov) August 1, 2025
A drop within the ocean
Lido is the second largest DeFi protocol by complete worth locked (TVL) at $32 billion in keeping with DeFiLlama, the sector’s main knowledge dashboard.
Whereas it’s lively on different chains, 99.9% of its TVL is held on Ethereum.
The sheer scale of staked ether (ETH) amassed by Lido, and the accompanying liquid wrapper permitting the locked tokens to be reused throughout DeFi, triggered panic in Might, when an emergency vote was raised to rotate a compromised oracle key.
On the cuts, Shapovalov acknowledges that the choice could also be “counterintuitive amid a market upswing” however that the DAO’s focus is on “sustainable growth, operational focus, and alignment with the priorities of LDO tokenholders.”
DeFiLlama knowledge exhibits Lido core contributor salaries at simply over $8 million, with the same determine for working bills (although the figures are sourced from a 2022 report).
This 12 months to this point, Lido’s earnings have already surpassed $40 million.
L2 Curve-ball
The governance proposal made to Curve Finance’s DAO, however, suggests builders ought to stop work on L2 community integrations, which produce negligible protocol charges in comparison with Ethereum mainnet.
Curve is DeFi’s second largest decentralized trade, judged by its TVL of $2.2 billion, and has processed over $7 billion of quantity within the final month, 96% of which was on Ethereum.
When merchants use the protocol’s swimming pools to swap tokens, they pay a charge which is break up between liquidity suppliers and the DAO.
DeFiLlama knowledge exhibits that, other than a quick interval between in 2021 and 2022, when Curve’s non-mainnet deployments (principally Polygon and Arbitrum) recurrently produced over 10% of complete charges, Curve’s mainnet swimming pools have in any other case utterly dominated buying and selling exercise.
For the reason that protocol’s launch in 2020, Ethereum swimming pools have been liable for 93% of all charges.
On the time of writing, the proposal has didn’t generate a lot debate, with the one reply calling for extra “background or context” so as to have the ability to correctly focus on such a “radical” proposal.
Decentralized autonomous organizations, the usual technique to run DeFi initiatives, are sometimes synonymous with inefficiency, waste, and even accusations of groups looting treasuries.
A flat, non-hierarchical construction and tradition of open contribution is commonly seen as a noble endeavor however, maybe, not the perfect bang for one’s digital buck.
