You staked ETH with Lido and your wallet now shows stETH, or wstETH, where the ETH used to be. Nothing was lost. The token is your claim on the staked ETH plus rewards, and RealOpen counts it toward your Proof of Funds as ETH, at the ETH rate.
You do not need to unstake to verify, to get a letter, or, in most cases, to close. stETH and wstETH are transferable tokens. You need the address that holds them, and about ten minutes.
The Ethereum address that holds the stETH or wstETH, and a RealOpen account. There is no Lido login to hand over, no API key, nothing custodial. Ownership is proven the same way as any wallet: a signed message or a small transfer.
New to RealOpen wallet verification? The ownership guide covers the signature and transfer options in detail.
Lido takes your ETH, stakes it across its validators, and gives you stETH in return. stETH rebases: your balance ticks up as rewards accrue, and one stETH is redeemable for one ETH through the protocol. wstETH is the wrapped version for apps that cannot handle a rebasing balance. The token count stays fixed and the ETH value per token rises instead.
A plain ETH balance lookup says the ETH is gone. A token balance lookup shows stETH or wstETH, which most proof-of-funds checks either ignore or treat as an unknown altcoin. Neither view is right. RealOpen reads both tokens by contract and converts them back to ETH terms.
RealOpen does not recognize stETH by its ticker; anyone can deploy a token called stETH. It reads the balance of the canonical Lido stETH contract and the canonical wstETH contract for your verified address, directly on Ethereum. stETH is counted one-to-one. wstETH is converted using the rate the wstETH contract itself reports, so the ETH figure matches what Lido would give you if you unwrapped.
Each position is recorded with its provenance: the contract it was read from, the method that produced the rate, the block, and the time. If you have an open withdrawal request, RealOpen also reads the Lido withdrawal queue for your address and records whether the request is still queued or already finalized.
Bridged wstETH on Arbitrum and Base is recognized by its contract on those networks as well; there the ETH-equivalent is estimated from market price rather than read from the mainnet rate contract.
Under the verified wallet, each position shows its amount, protocol, and liquidity, for example:
The token lines sit inside your transferable value: they count as ETH at the ETH RealScore rate and nothing has to happen before they can be sent. Lines in the withdrawal queue count toward your verified total but are disclosed as not yet transferable until you claim. Compare pooled staking, which reads 10 ETH · Staked · Everstake · Unstaking required and always needs an exit first. See how staked value and available value are treated across every supported chain.
RealOpen converts your crypto at close and wires dollars to escrow. Because stETH and wstETH are transferable, you have two routes:
If you redeem, start early in escrow. The queue does not care about your closing date. Either way, follow the funding instructions RealOpen issues in escrow for which asset to send and where.