Q3 2025

Hello! This quarterly report shows a bit later than usual, but that’s because we’ve been busy working hard for the community of operators 👷. Here you will find:

• How our community has grown
• Our participation in conferences
• Where are we allocating funds

And much more! Including some big news for @ stakesaurus, who’s now moving to the Institutional Relations team at Lido to help spread the word about Ethereum and staking as more institutions put their eyes on web3, but isn’t planning to stop helping community stakers either ;).

Community

Our community strategy largely remains the same. Hyper-local communities give home stakers a tight-knit space to learn and share with fellow Ethereum enthusiasts.

As it stands, these are the numbers at the end of this quarter:

• 462 total registered Node Operators in the CSM. Note that this is the total amount of NOs coming from a mix of efforts from Lido contributors as it’s currently not possible to attribute provenance.
• 15 satellite solo staking communities established (up from 13 in Q2’25) with local advocates across Asia and LATAM with X members in aggregate. These satellite communities mainly organize themselves on Telegram and leverage the Lido CSM for their solo staking journeys.

*The same footnotes from the Community section of Q3’24’s report apply here.

Satisfaction Survey

As usual, we ran our quarterly satisfaction survey to understand where we can improve. This one received 52 respondents, up by 14 from the 38 respondents in Q2 ‘25. We subtracted the percentage of those who voted 5 (promoters) from the percentage of those who voted 1-3 (detractors), giving us a total Net Promoter Score (NPS).

These are the results:

We're grateful for the feedback in the additional comments section, which was full of positivity and support. Thank you all. 🙏

Community Staking Online

• Aztec Town Hall: Guest presentation during the Aztec Community Call on why it makes sense for Aztec node operators to also join Lido CSM, plus how to meet the conditions for the Identified Community Staker Framework.
• CSM Obol Workshop: We showed the power of DVT with Obol and the Community Staking Module. Everyone was very excited to give it a try and some of them are setting up a cluster!

CSM-DVT Clusters

The CSM-DVT clusters are a powerful conversion strategy within the strongest communities. Additional to the ones from previous quarters, we just started a CSM-DVT Cluster in LatAm, and a CSM-Obol Cluster with folks that attended the workshop, both still in an early stage.

Other Community Staking Content (podcasts, blog posts, and more)

• Official CSM Guide on Lido Docs
• How to improve your validator performance X thread
• Aztec L2 node setup guide
• Video guide on submitting your addresses for the Identified Community Stakers Framework
• Obol CSM setup video & SSV if publish

Community Lifeguards at Conferences & Events

Sam got pretty busy in Q3 with all the events in Asia, including some with institutions or trader groups. The interest in staking is high!

For what’s left of the year we’ll have continued presence in Singapore, plus some significant activations in Brazil and Argentina.

Conferences & Community Events

Solo Stakers Guild (SSG)

Running validators sounds like a daunting task for many, and that’s why SSGs are a cornerstone of our strategy, it just works better in person. But that also means there’s a higher level of planning and coordination behind the scenes to make sure participants have the best experience possible.

Our cost-efficient in-person community engagement model continues steadily this quarter.

*Planned by CLGs, but run by trusted community member

Lido Luma Calendar

We hosted 6 events in total during this period, including SSGs in 5 countries, online events and supported those of our satellite communities. That is without counting bigger events like the flagship Solo Stakers Guild in Cannes.

We saw an increase of 32%, finishing Q3 with 2620 subscribers from 1981 last quarter.

Make sure to subscribe to the Luma Calendar for all things Lido.

Lido Community Staking Tribes (LCST)

We continued support for all projects involved in the LCST, including guidance for them to become ICS operators!

Progress of Participants

Next Steps

Although some participants prefer to wait for Dappnode to release their Hoodi CSM package before resuming their setup process, we took the initiative to publish workaround instructions to all participants.

We will be pushing all participants aggressively onto Lido CSM v2 Mainnet in Q3!

Support

We continue helping node operators in CSM and all over Ethereum to keep their validators online through many of the workshops, 1-1s and reachouts. And now that CSM v2 is out and with increased capacity we hope to see more operators joining, and we’re ready to help them succeed here!

Internal work

This is not something the community sees, but we spend a fair amount of our time on organizing ourselves internally (CLGs weeklys, internal documentation, etc) as well as calls, some regular syncs with other Lido contributors and other meetings with relevant parties from the ecosystem like other staking-related projects or communities. These meetings cover various topics, from CSM-related decision-making to presenting community ideas and initiatives.

Grants given in Q3

We spent $13,021 (a decrease of 45.7% from $24,003 last quarter), with most of it going to Solo Stakers Guilds, plus a few other grants.

• Solo Staker Guild: We had a total of 7 SSGs this quarter in Asia, Europe and Latam. Find the details for all of them in the Conferences & Events section above.
• ethduti.es: a validator duties tracker that stores all data on your browser.
• Proof-of-Teach: A 3-day hybrid technical workshop in Davao, Philippines, covering topics across the Ethereum stack. Stakesaurus ran a workshop on Lido CSM during the Ethereum validator segment. We provided a small retroactive grant of $500 to support the organisers for effective Ethereum education in the Philippines.
• SEVEN Blockchain validator workshop: An in-person workshop for the students of Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) covering Lido CSM and Aztec L2 sequencers. This activity is also part of Aztec’s participation in the Lido Community Staking Tribes Initiative where Aztec is sponsoring 1 custom Dappnode hardware for the SUTD blockchain club (SEVEN). We issued a small retroactive grant of $366 covering 40 dinner boxes for the participants.
• Update to nodeop.info: A community-run CSM rewards calculator

Operative Expenses

This quarter we used $8,790.22 (43.9% of the total $20K budget), an increase of 16.1% over the past quarter’s $7,570.65. As seen on the screenshot below, most was used for travel expenses, followed by miscellaneous and some software expenses.

What to expect in Q4 2025

CSM v2 is live with increased capacity! We’re gearing up to have a productive end of the year with some plans including:

• More operators joining the CSM! Now that v2 is out and capacity is increased we’re gearing up to get some new Home Stakers in.
• Strong community presence in Brazil 🇧🇷 and Argentina 🇦🇷 for Devconnect and in Singapore.
• More content and preparations for 2026!

Stay tuned!

Sam moving teams

As explained in the introduction, Sam is moving to the Institutional Relations team at Lido. The space has matured a lot and we’re seeing an unprecedented amount of institutions wanting to participate in this world we call web3; and now Ethereum needs the best talent possible to be represented and adapt to this new phase, while using this new interest as a way to spread our values.

On a more personal note, I know he’s not going anywhere (especially because the community is at his heart so we’ll continue to do things), but it is only right to state how happy and proud I am to have been working so closely with Sam over the past two years.