The native token behind Lido Finance surged more than 10% over the past 24 hours, jumping from roughly $4.25 to a peak of $4.82, according to data pulled from CoinMarketCap. LDO has since retraced some and is now trading at $4.56, up 6.7% on the day.

The project’s token is a governance token, letting holders vote on proposals and adjust fee parameters within Lido Finance.

Today’s move is only the latest in what has been a very bullish week for LDO; in the last seven days, the token has risen by over 25%. On March 28, the token was trading at $3.66. Looking back even further, LDO has more than doubled its value over the past month. 

The bullish price action behind this little-known cryptocurrency is likely tied to the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, in which the number two network will shift from a proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a proof of stake (PoS) one. 

This shift has been called “The Merge” and is expected to occur by the end of Q2 “or possibly slipping into Q3,” according to ConsenSys CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin. 

What is Lido Finance? 

Lido Finance is a staking project that lets users deposit their Ethereum holdings and earn a yield. This is different than providing liquidity on a decentralized exchange (DEX); instead, these deposits are used to help secure the PoS-based Ethereum 2.0, which was recently rebranded to “Consensus Layer.”

Like miners on a PoW network, PoS networks need validators to ensure that the network is approving legitimate transactions and rejecting fraudulent transactions. And unlike miners, which demand a…