Lido Finance (LDO) generated more fees than Hyperliquid (HYPE) over the past 30 days, according to Token Terminal’s 30-day fee leaderboard.
The liquid staking protocol produced $56.7mn in fees compared with Hyperliquid’s $48.4mn. Hyperliquid operates a high-performance, onchain perpetuals exchange known for rapid trading and revenue generation in decentralized finance (DeFi). This outperformance comes even as many in the market view Lido as a mature, lower-growth staking protocol rather than a high-growth revenue story.
Fees are not the same as protocol revenue, and protocol revenue is not the same as tokenholder value accrual. Lido’s business remains large and profitable, but the LDO investment case is more complicated than simply pointing to its fee rank.
Fee engine remains robust
Lido is a liquid staking protocol on Ethereum, the leading smart contract blockchain. Users deposit ETH, Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, into Lido and receive stETH, a liquid token that represents their staked ETH plus accrued staking rewards. Instead of running a validator themselves, users outsource that complexity to Lido’s validator set while keeping a liquid asset that can be used across DeFi applications. This is the core reason Lido became one of Ethereum’s most important infrastructure protocols: it turns staking from a locked, technical activity into a liquid financial product.
Lido generates fees by taking a cut of staking rewards. The simplest way to think about it is a waterfall: fees are the gross staking rewards flowing through the protocol, revenue is Lido’s 10% cut, and earnings are what remains after expenses and incentives. Users receive most of the staking yield, while Lido’s fee is split between node operators and the DAO, the decentralized autonomous organization that governs the protocol.
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Source: TokenTerminal
Lido generated $12.5mn in fees and $1.3mn in revenue between 11-17 May, meaning revenue was almost exactly 10% of fees. Annualized, that implies roughly $650mn in gross fees and $65mn in protocol revenue. The protocol is also still profitable. The latest weekly earnings were $937,000, meaning roughly 75% of revenue flowed through to earnings after costs. That implies close to $49mn in annualized earnings.
However, LDO holders do not automatically receive those revenues or earnings. LDO is primarily a governance token: it controls protocol parameters, treasury decisions, and future monetization choices, but there is no direct dividend, staking yield, or automatic revenue share. That stands in contrast to protocols like Hyperliquid, where fee generation is tied more directly to tokenholder value through buybacks and ecosystem support mechanisms. So, while Lido is generating more gross fees than Hyperliquid, the market may still assign a lower valuation multiple because the path from protocol earnings to tokenholder returns is much less direct.
Valuation looks attractive
On valuation, Lido looks visually appealing. Its latest circulating P/F ratio – price-to-fees – sits at roughly 0.43x. In simple terms, that means Lido’s circulating token value is only about 0.43 times the protocol’s annualized gross fees. For a protocol generating more than $50mn in monthly fees, that screens as very cheap relative to much of crypto.
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Source: TokenTerminal
The ratio has also compressed heavily over time. Lido’s circulating P/F ratio is down roughly 67% year over year, showing how aggressively the market has derated LDO despite the protocol still generating meaningful fees and remaining profitable. However, the metric comes with an important caveat: Lido’s P/F ratio uses gross fees, not protocol revenue. Since Lido only captures around 10% of staking rewards as revenue, the headline multiple makes the protocol look cheaper than it really is. Adjusting for actual revenue capture, the latest 0.43x P/F is closer to roughly 4.3x price/revenue. Using latest earnings instead, Lido trades closer to about 5.8x price/earnings on a circulating basis. That is still not expensive, but it is less dramatic than the headline fee multiple initially suggests.
The treasury picture is more mixed. Lido’s treasury value was $110.4mn in the latest data. It is down about 12% from four weeks earlier and roughly 43% year over year. The treasury is the closest thing LDO holders have to tangible balance-sheet backing. If the treasury is shrinking while revenues do not directly accrue to token holders, investors will naturally apply a discount.
TVL, or total value locked – a key metric measuring assets deposited in the protocol – also points to maturity rather than acceleration. Lido’s latest TVL was $18.8bn, down from $22.1bn in mid-April and far below its 2025 high. Some of that decline may simply reflect ETH price weakness rather than user withdrawals, so it should not be over-interpreted without stETH supply and net deposit data. Still, the direction does not scream growth.
Lido’s fee ranking is impressive. Generating more 30-day fees than Hyperliquid is a useful reminder that liquid staking remains one of the largest real businesses in crypto. Lido has scale, recurring revenue, positive earnings and deep integration across Ethereum DeFi. But the market is not ignoring that by accident. LDO is cheap because the value-accrual path is indirect. Fees go first to stakers, node operators and the DAO structure, not automatically to token holders. The treasury is shrinking, TVL is below prior highs and recent DeFi spillover risk showed that Lido’s expansion beyond plain staking can introduce new forms of exposure.
Lido’s numbers show that the protocol itself remains one of the largest and most profitable pieces of infrastructure in crypto. The challenge is that strong protocol economics do not automatically translate into strong tokenholder economics. Until LDO has a clearer path from fees and earnings to tokenholder returns, the market may continue valuing it more as a governance infrastructure than a cash-flow asset.
