Lido Stakers Face Frustration as Bug Blocks Access to $24 Million in SOL
Lido users frustrated by lack of communication and technical hurdles in retrieving funds.
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A critical bug in Lido's discontinued Solana staking protocol is causing significant concern among users. The bug prevents the withdrawal of approximately $24 million worth of staked SOL tokens (stSOL).
Lido, a leading liquid staking platform, sunset its Solana protocol in February 2024. While users were given ample warning, those who missed the deadline found themselves unable to easily reclaim their funds. The process became even more fraught when a smart contract bug was discovered, further preventing withdrawals.
Missed Deadlines and Technical Hurdles
Lido's decision to remove the web interface for its Solana protocol forced users to interact directly with smart contracts to retrieve their staked SOL. This presents a significant barrier to less technically savvy users.
With over 31,000 wallets holding stSOL, the situation has left many users in limbo.
Criticism of Lido's Handling of the Situation
In addition to the technical challenges, Lido has faced criticism for its communication around the situation. Some users felt that Lido's decision to discontinue the protocol needed to be adequately communicated. Further, it took nearly a month for Lido and the protocol's maintainers, P2P, to properly address the withdrawal bug.
Alternative Solutions Emerge
Thankfully, for users affected by Lido's Solana bug, alternative solutions have emerged. Marinade, a leading Solana staking provider, has come to the rescue by offering a user-friendly interface for users to redeem their stSOL for SOL, eliminating the need to interact with complex command-line interfaces (CLIs).
When contacted for comment on the situation, Brandon, a contributor to Marinade, said, "One of the key functions of the Marinade dApp for users is being able to redelegate any stake account or LST instantly. Even if an LST isn't supported by the original provider, Marinade is able to initate that redelegation.
It should be the goal of every Solana LST to be fully permissionless and open source so that this situation can't happen. That's why Marinade is building everything it can open-source so it can still be used even if the core team were to disappear”.