The Lido Labs Foundation launched stVaults on the Ethereum mainnet on Friday.
stVaults marks a shift from a single product model to a shared bet on the protocol by opening up its infrastructure to third-party builders.
In simple terms, stVaults allowed other teams to connect to Lido’s betting system instead of building their own from scratch. Until now, developing a staking product on Ethereum typically involved setting up validators, integrations, and liquidity independently, which can be an expensive and complex process. stVaults aims to reduce that barrier by allowing builders to use existing Lido pipelines while customizing how staking works for their users.
stVaults are isolated staking environments that allow teams to run custom validation setups and optionally create stETH, while remaining connected to Lido’s DeFi and liquidity integrations. Lido said its core staking protocol remains unchanged, with stVaults operating alongside it.
The launch comes as Ethereum bets move beyond universal products toward more specialized setups. These include institutional-grade staking with tighter controls, application-specific staking products, and Layer 2 networks that embed staking directly into their infrastructure, all without fragmenting liquidity across competing pools.
Initial implementations include Linea, Consensys’ Layer 2 network, which uses stVaults to stake a portion of bridged ETH and redirect rewards to liquidity providers and ecosystem incentives. Blockchain analytics firm Nansen is also using stVaults to launch its first Ethereum staking product.
“StVaults shows how Ethereum staking is evolving. Different users now need different configurations,” said Isidoros Passadis, head of staking at the Lido Labs Foundation. “With stVaults, the Lido protocol can meet these needs within a single framework while maintaining the liquidity and transparency that stETH is known for.”
Read more: Lido goes modular with vault-based ‘V3’ upgrade
