$24 Million in Lido-Staked Solana Remains Locked Despite Program Closure

Even after the liquid-staking platform Lido on Solana ceased operations five months ago, there's still a staggering $24 million worth of tokenized staked Solana (stSOL) trapped due to a malfunctioning smart contract.

The platform, which previously enabled users to stake Solana and earn a 5% yield, was shut down in October 2023 due to financial sustainability concerns and dwindling fees. Initially, users had the option to unstake their Solana tokens via a user-friendly interface until February. However, this interface was also discontinued, leaving users with the only option of manually unstaking through Solana's command line interface (CLI).

Despite instructions provided by Lido, some users have found the CLI process too complex, leading to frustration and complaints on Lido's Discord channel in March. As per Solscan data, approximately $24 million worth of stSOL remains in circulation across 31,588 holders.

Several users have reported encountering difficulties even when following the provided instructions. For instance, user ericxtang expressed frustration on March 15, stating that they were unable to unstake stSOL despite attempting the solutions provided by Lido.

Further investigation revealed that the issue might stem from a problem with the smart contract governing the withdrawal function. Pavel Pavlov, a product manager at P2P Validator, the team behind Lido on Solana, disclosed in a March 30 Discord message that the issue likely arose from alterations in the Rent-Exempt Split logic within the smart contract.

While P2P Validator has identified the issue, they lack the authority to directly resolve it and are reaching out to the Lido DAO to potentially modify the smart contract. In the meantime, Pavlov informed users that the p2p team had successfully implemented an updated maintainer bot, allowing for stSOL withdrawals using CLI. However, changing the smart contract presents significant complexity and may require substantial time.

In light of the ongoing issue, some users have suggested utilizing on-chain stability protocols like Sanctum or Jupiter (which leverages Sanctum) to exchange stSOL for SOL or other liquid staking tokens as an alternative workaround.