Lido KSM Liquid Staking Protocol, built on the Kusama chain, allows their users to earn staking rewards on the Kusama chain without locking KSM or maintaining staking infrastructure.
Lido on Kusama make KSMs liquid while staking. It ensures maximized yield and availability of staking and makes leverage options possible while being decentralized and secure. Users can deposit KSM to the Lido smart contract and receive stKSM or wstKSM tokens in return. Unlike KSM staked directly on the Kusama network, the stKSM and wstKSM tokens are free from the limitations associated with the lack of liquidity and can be transferred at any time. The stKSM and wstKSM token balances corresponds to the amount of the Kusama chain KSM that a holder can withdraw.
That becomes possible because of permissionless validator node selection and dynamic reallocation algorithms along with slashing hedging deployed on Moonbeam parachain and empowered by XC-20 cross-chain token standard. wstKSM is a wrapped version of stKSM. Due to the nature of Lido, the amount of stKSM on your balance is not constant — it changes daily as staking rewards come in. As some DeFi protocols require a constant balance mechanism for tokens, wstKSM keeps your balance of stKSM fixed and uses an underlying share system to reflect your earned staking rewards.
