Luganodes

Luganodes is a staking firm that runs validators for big clients such as funds, exchanges and custodians. A validator is a server that checks each block of a chain and earns rewards for the people who stake with it. Luganodes runs them on more than 40 chains. Solana is one of its main ones, next to Ethereum, TRON and Hyperliquid.

The service is non-custodial. That means your coins stay in your own wallet, and Luganodes never holds your keys. The firm grew out of Plan B, a scheme backed by the City of Lugano and Tether.

Its website claimed more than $2 billion staked in October 2026.

How Luganodes staking works: non-custodial delegation

Luganodes staking works by delegation. You point your coins at a Luganodes validator. The validator does the work, and the rewards flow back to you. Your coins never move into a Luganodes account. Its staking page says assets stay "fully non-custodial, with no transfer of ownership during staking".

So you sign each step yourself. You sign to stake. You sign again to unstake and take your coins out. Luganodes can't move your funds. It also can't get them back for you if you lose your keys.

Most clients reach Luganodes through a firm they use already. The site names BitGo, Anchorage, Hex Trust, Bitfinex, CoinList, Tether and Ledger Enterprise as clients. If you hold SOL with one of them, you can often stake with Luganodes from that same account.

Luganodes Solana validator: clients, MEV and performance

Luganodes runs a main Solana validator under its own name. You can check its live stake, fee and yield on our page for the Luganodes validator.

The firm's Solana page sets out how it is built. Luganodes runs a mix of node software, Jito-Agave and Firedancer. It says neither runs on more than 60% of its machines. If a bug hits one, the other keeps going.

The validator also earns MEV. This is the extra income a block maker gets from the order it puts trades in. Luganodes earns it through the block engine from Jito JTO$0.446-4.8%. It also uses Jito BAM, which sorts trades inside sealed hardware. The page says a private fibre link from DoubleZero 2Z$0.031-6.3% is on offer too.

For the first quarter of 2026, Luganodes reported a skip rate of 0.076%. The skip rate is the share of its blocks a validator fails to make, so lower is better. This is the firm's own number. Check it against live data before you lean on it.

How to stake SOL with Luganodes

You stake SOL with Luganodes the same way you would with any Solana validator. There are three ways in:

1. A wallet. The Luganodes SOL guide uses Phantom CASH$0.9990.0%. Open your SOL balance, pick the option to earn, search for Luganodes and confirm.
2. A custodian or business platform that lists Luganodes.
3. The Staking API, for firms that want code to do it.

In each case you stake to the validator's vote account, the address that receives your stake. For Luganodes it is 6aow5rTURdbhbeMDrFrbP2GR5vZjMEhktEy87iH1VGPs, per its docs.

Your stake goes live at the next epoch. An epoch is Solana's reward cycle, and it lasts two to three days. Rewards are added to your stake each epoch, so they build on each other with no work from you.

To unstake, you wait about one epoch, the Luganodes docs say. Your SOL is locked for that time. Still not sure where to stake? You can compare validators by commission and uptime on our list.

Luganodes Staking API, Managed Nodes and RPC

Luganodes also sells three tools to firms that build on top of staking.

The Staking API lets an exchange or fund add staking to its own app. The Solana API guide shows how your keys stay with you. The API sends back an unsigned request, and "you must sign and broadcast this transaction with your wallet's private key". You have to ask Luganodes for an API key first.

Managed Nodes is a white-label service. Luganodes runs a validator under your brand name and looks after the machines. The product page promises 99.9% uptime. It also says the team will respond to a fault in under 15 minutes.

RPC is the link an app uses to read from and write to a chain. The plans page lists a free tier, a $49 Growth plan and a $199 Pro plan per month. These plans cover Bitcoin, Ethereum and TRON. Solana is not on that list. For Solana builders, Luganodes offers an open-source Solana indexer. It is a tool to search and watch on-chain data.

What changed at Luganodes in 2026: Ledger, TRXS and Hyperliquid peering

Luganodes added new products in September 2026 and began to drop some chains. None of these moves were on Solana.

• On 9 September 2026, the Canary Staked TRX ETF (ticker TRXS) began to trade on Cboe. Unchained reported that the fund stakes 90% of its assets through Luganodes. Luganodes confirmed its role in a post.
• On 24 September 2026, Luganodes went live for ETH staking inside Ledger Enterprise. The two firms have worked on Ethereum and Solana staking since December 2024, per their case study.
• On the same day it launched Hyperliquid Node Peering. This is a paid data feed for trading firms that run their own Hyperliquid nodes.

Luganodes is also cutting back. It said it would shut its Aptos validator on 14 October 2026. That same month it said it was ending dYdX support. Both times it told people to unstake or move to a new validator. It gave the same reason each time: a rethink of which chains it wants to serve.

Who Luganodes is for

Luganodes suits big firms that need paperwork as much as yield. Think of a custodian, an exchange, an ETF issuer or a fund. Each has to show its auditors a checked vendor, a signed contract and proof of cover. Luganodes says it serves more than 60 such clients. The Luganodes FAQ says "institutions and large delegators can stake SOL directly with Luganodes".

If you are a small holder, you can still stake SOL to the validator from a normal wallet. Nothing on Solana stops you. But the extras that set Luganodes apart are sold to big clients. These are things like contracts, reports and cover against loss. The firm lists no retail offer and no minimum.

Luganodes is a poor fit if you want a liquid staking token. It runs validators. It does not issue a token of its own on Solana.

Is Luganodes safe? Certifications, insurance and risks

Luganodes has a clean public record, but most of the proof comes from the firm itself. It holds two security badges, ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type II. Both cover how a firm guards its systems and data. It reports no slashing on any chain since launch. Slashing is a fine some chains charge a validator that breaks the rules. We found no outside report of a slashing or a hack at Luganodes.

A few points need a closer look before you stake:

• The audit is narrower than it sounds. The site lists a Quantstamp "independent slashing risk assessment". The one audited item it names is an open-source Ethereum tool, the Pectra batch CLI. We could not find the report, so we can't confirm what it covers.
• The cover terms are not public. Luganodes says clients can get slashing cover through Chainproof. It does not publish the limits, the chains covered or who can get it.
• "Swiss-operated" does not mean Swiss-registered. The Luganodes FAQ gives the legal entity as Boldfit Tech Solutions Ltd., based in the Cayman Islands.
• The Solana fee is not on the firm's site or docs. Read it from live data, and bear in mind a validator can change it.
• Chains can be dropped. The Aptos and dYdX exits show that you may need to move your stake at a few weeks' notice.

On Solana the downside is smaller than on some chains. The Luganodes docs note that Solana has no automatic slashing. So the main risks are lost rewards when a node is down and a rise in the fee. No Luganodes smart contract sits in the path. Your SOL stays in a stake account that only you can take funds out of.

Luganodes alternatives: Figment, Kiln, Chorus One, Everstake and Solana Compass

The closest rivals to Luganodes are other staking firms that serve big clients. Google's related searches for Luganodes point to Figment, Kiln, P2P, Chorus One and Everstake. Each one runs validators on many chains for funds and custodians. Your pick often comes down to three things: which custodian you use, which chains you hold, and the contract and cover each firm offers.

If you are one person who only stakes SOL, the choice is not the same. You don't need a business contract. The fee, the yield and the track record count for more.

One note on our own interest. Solana Compass, which publishes this page, runs its own Solana validator and a liquid staking token. So we compete with Luganodes for staked SOL. You can see how ours works on our staking page. Our validator is Solana-only. It does not offer the security badges or the cover that big clients buy from Luganodes.

Luganodes company, founder and funding

Luganodes has been active since July 2022, its FAQ says. Its chief executive is Anuj Shankar, who worked at McKinsey and Microsoft before this. We could not find any funding round the firm has made public. Tracxn's profile, dated 18 August 2026, lists it as unfunded. We also found no sign of a Luganodes token.