Lilypad

Lilypad was a Solana NFT launchpad for "LST-NFTs". These were NFTs minted with a liquid staking token instead of plain SOL. The staking yield went to the collection's team. Minters could burn their NFT to get their tokens back. Pathfinders announced Lilypad in June 2024, built with Phase Labs. In October 2025, Medano Labs bought it. Medano is a studio from the people behind Pathfinders. As of October 2026, the site and docs no longer load. The Lilypad X account has been quiet for a year. The platform appears inactive.

This is not Lilypad Network (lilypad.tech), a separate AI compute project, or the Lily Pad Bandits token.

How Lilypad LST-NFTs worked

In a normal NFT mint, buyers pay SOL and the team takes the whole sum on day one. Lilypad changed who held the money.

Minters paid with pathSOL, the liquid staking token issued by Pathfinders. Each NFT stayed backed by the pathSOL used to mint it. The team never received that principal. Instead, the Pathfinders launch post explains, the collection's pool of pathSOL earned staking yield, and the team received that yield every epoch. More NFTs minted meant a bigger pool and more yield for the team.

The minter's protection was the dissolve option. A holder could dissolve (burn) the NFT at any time and reclaim the pathSOL behind it. That also stopped the team earning yield on that position.

Why Lilypad called its mints "unruggable"

A rug pull works because the team already has the mint money. Lilypad's pitch was that teams never held it. They only earned yield while holders kept their NFTs. If a team stopped delivering, holders could burn and walk away with their deposit, and the team's income fell with each burn.

Pathfinders framed this as funding teams' costs "over a longer time horizon while reducing the risk for users." An Alea Research note from August 2024 called the lock-to-mint model an incremental innovation that pushes teams into long-term pacing and adds a use for LSTs.

The trade-off is income size. Staking yield on a pool is a small fraction of what a team would collect from an upfront mint. A collection had to be large, or long-lived, to fund real work.

Lilypad launches: Pathfinders and the native mint

Pathfinders said its own 10,000-piece collection would launch on Lilypad, to prove the model on its own project. Alea Research reported that Lilypad's first mint, of its own native collection, sold about 70% of its supply. We found no public record of other teams launching collections through the platform.

Lilypad acquisition by Medano Labs (October 2025)

On 17 October 2025, Phase Labs announced that Medano Labs had bought Lilypad. Medano is a new studio from @pixisu. Phase said it was "built by the same people who shipped Pathfinders." It added that Medano would "continue the mission of safer, more transparent mints on Solana." Medano's own intro post lists Pathfinders and Lilypad as past work.

The last Lilypad post on X came on 27 October 2025. It was a teaser: "The pond opens and a new world hums beyond the reeds." Nothing has followed. Since then, Medano's posts have been about NOTED, a story series, not Lilypad.

Is Lilypad still active?

It appears not. As of October 2026:

• lilypad.cc fails to load (it returned a 404 in August 2026 and now fails at the connection stage);
• the docs domain, guide.lilydocs.com, no longer resolves;
• @LilypadLaunch has not posted since October 2025.

There has been no shutdown announcement. The acquisition post spoke of a "new beginning," but a year on, no relaunch has appeared.

Who Lilypad was for

Lilypad suited NFT minters who wanted a refundable exit, and small teams willing to trade an upfront payout for steady yield. Its main constraint was that minting required pathSOL, a single, small LST, rather than any LST or plain SOL.

Today it is relevant mainly to two groups: people holding NFTs minted through Lilypad, and builders studying yield-funded mint models. It is not a place to launch or mint a new collection.

Lilypad risks and what to check

• No working interface. With the site down, there is no official front end for dissolving an LST-NFT. Holders who still have one should look for an official word from Medano Labs or Pathfinders before trusting any third-party tool that claims to redeem it.
• No published audit. We found no public audit of Lilypad's programs, and our project record lists no program addresses, so we could not check who controls upgrades.
• Single-LST dependence. Every position was backed by pathSOL. Its value and liquidity depend on that one token, not on SOL alone.
• Yield too small to fund teams. The model protects minters but leaves teams with modest, uncertain income. That may explain why few collections used it.

Alternatives to Lilypad

We know of no live Solana launchpad that copies the LST-NFT burn-to-refund model. If you just want staking yield, you don't need an NFT. You can hold a liquid staking token, or delegate SOL to a validator. Solana Compass runs its own validator and a staking page. Keep our interest in mind when weighing that option.