Marinade

Marinade, also called Marinade Finance, is a way to stake SOL on Solana. You can stake and keep your SOL in your own wallet. Or you can swap it for mSOL, a token that earns while you use it in DeFi. Funds and other large holders use a third option, Marinade Select. What sets Marinade apart is how it picks validators. It runs an auction, the Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM). Validators bid to pay you the most, and they put up a bond to back the bid. Marinade started in 2021. It takes no fee to stake and no cut of your rewards.

How Marinade's Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM) picks validators

Marinade's Stake Auction Marketplace is an auction for its stake. Each epoch, validators say how much yield they will give stakers, and the stake moves to the best offers. Validators must lock up a bond before they can take part. The bond pays the bids and covers stakers if the validator falls short.

According to the SAM documentation, Marinade Native and mSOL stake both go through the auction. Marinade Select uses its own vetted validator set instead. A validator can bid in two ways. A static bid is a fixed cost per 1,000 SOL delegated, paid each epoch from its bond. A commission bid shares a set slice of its inflation rewards, MEV or block rewards with you.

The auction clears at one price. You get the yield offered by the lowest-ranked validator that still wins stake. Higher bidders pay only enough to match that rate. No single validator can hold more than 15% of Marinade's stake, a cap in place since epoch 946.

Marinade has tightened the rules since Solana's Alpenglow upgrade went live on 21 October 2026. Under Alpenglow, validators pay a fee from their vote account each epoch to take part. Marinade said on 23 October that SAM now checks that balance and moves stake off validators that can't pay. A bond must also keep about 1 SOL that can never be charged. Since the epoch 1072 auction, a bond holding only that floor counts as no bond at all. That validator gets no SAM stake and is first in line to be unstaked.

Protected Staking Rewards: how Marinade validator bonds cover downtime

Protected Staking Rewards (PSR) means a validator pays for its own mistakes. If a Marinade validator goes offline, you lose rewards. PSR takes that lost amount from the validator's bond and pays it to you. The same applies if the validator raises its fee in the middle of an epoch.

The PSR docs name three covered cases: long downtime, a fee rise mid-epoch, and, since Alpenglow, a validator shut out of the voting set. The first percentage point of downtime or of a fee rise carries no charge. Beyond that, the bond repays the lost rewards. MEV and block rewards are not covered.

Only stake you put in through Marinade is protected. If you staked with a validator yourself, you are not covered, even if that validator has a bond.

Bugs in Solana's software are treated differently from a validator's own mistakes. In late October 2026, a client bug made some validators on Agave 4.3.2 skip slots. Marinade said it would not charge their bonds for those slots until a fix ships. We covered that choice and the Agave fix it was waiting for.

Marinade Native staking: keep SOL in your own stake accounts

Marinade Native is staking without handing over your SOL. Your SOL sits in normal Solana stake accounts that you own. Marinade can only move that stake between validators. Rewards land in those accounts every epoch. Solana's blocks got faster in October 2026. An epoch now lasts about a day, so rewards arrive about daily.

The Marinade Native docs explain the split. You keep the withdraw authority, so only you can take SOL out. Marinade holds the stake authority. That lets it move, split and merge your stake. You can stake new SOL, or bring stake accounts you already have without unstaking first.

The minimum is 1.0046 SOL. Marinade suggests 100 SOL or more if you want your stake spread across its full validator set. That is because no new stake account can be smaller than 1 SOL. So a small stake lands on far fewer validators than a large one. If you leave with a delayed unstake, your SOL is ready in about a day.

Marinade Recipes: staking rewards paid in USDC, BTC or tokenized stocks

Marinade Recipes let you stake SOL natively but collect the rewards in another token. Your SOL stays staked, with a dedicated validator for each payout token. Each epoch, the rewards are swapped on-chain into the token you picked.

The Recipes docs list payouts in USDC, USDT, USDG and EURC stablecoins, cbBTC, wrapped ETH, tokenized gold, MNDE and tokenized stocks. The stocks include SPYx and NVDAx from Backed, and SPCX, a tokenized SpaceX stock from Backpack Securities. We wrote about the SPCX option when it launched in June 2026. Marinade takes no cut of the rewards. You can switch between payout tokens without unstaking.

mSOL, Marinade's liquid staking token

mSOL is the token you get when you stake SOL through Marinade Liquid. It is a liquid staking token: it keeps earning staking rewards, but you can still trade it or use it in DeFi. mSOL does not grow in number. Each mSOL is worth more SOL over time as rewards build up.

Because mSOL is a token, you can lend it, use it as collateral or put it in liquidity pools. The Marinade website names Kamino Finance KMNO$0.037+12.2%, Orca and Raydium among the places it is used. The SOL behind mSOL is staked through the same SAM auction as Marinade Native.

Getting out has two routes. A delayed unstake returns SOL after one epoch and costs 0.2%. An instant unstake swaps mSOL for SOL at once, with no Marinade fee, but you pay the market's price impact. That cost grows with the size of the swap.

For how mSOL compares with other liquid staking tokens, see our guide to how Solana LSTs work and differ.

Marinade Select, Max Yield and the Canary Marinade Solana ETF

Marinade Select is for funds, banks and other big holders. It only stakes with validators whose owners have shown who they are. Marinade's Q3 2026 report put that list at 64. Marinade Max Yield is the other choice for these clients. It uses the open auction and every validator in it.

Select also stakes the SOL in a US fund, the Canary Marinade Staked Solana ETF, or SOLC. The fund opened in November 2025, per Marinade's launch post. All of its SOL is staked through Select. BitGo Trust holds the coins, and all rewards go back to the fund.

In April 2026, Anchorage Digital let its clients stake through Marinade too. Marinade picks the validators, and Anchorage's bank holds the SOL. The Marinade website names other firms that hold coins for clients, such as Zodia, Copper and Fireblocks. It also says Marinade has passed SOC 2 checks. These are common security reviews for firms that look after client funds.

Most of Marinade's recent growth came from Native and Select. Stake in both rose over the summer, while the SOL behind mSOL fell a little, per the Q3 report.

Marinade Borrow: borrow SOL or USDC against staked SOL

Marinade Borrow lets you take a loan in SOL or USDC without unstaking. You pick how much you need. Marinade turns just enough of your stake into mSOL to back the loan, and opens the loan on whichever lender has the better rate.

Borrow rolled out in the Marinade app over the summer of 2026, and Marinade announced it was live for everyone in October. The Borrow docs say the lenders are Kamino and Jupiter JUP$0.261+4.6% Lend. Collateral can come from stake accounts, mSOL or SOL in your wallet. The collateral keeps earning staking rewards, and there is no fixed repayment date.

Marinade charges no fee for Borrow. You pay the lender's variable interest rate. The lender also sets the loan limits, and if your loan grows too large against your collateral, the lender can sell part of it, usually with a penalty. A SOL loan against mSOL carries less of that risk than a USDC loan, because SOL and mSOL move in price together.

Marinade Finance fees for staking and unstaking

Marinade charges nothing to stake and takes no share of your staking rewards. It makes its money from validators instead: it keeps 75% of the bids validators pay in the auction to win stake. Your main costs come when you leave.

Source: Marinade's FAQ, plus the Native, Recipes and Borrow docs.

The bid fee is what pays for Marinade. In Q3 2026, almost all of its roughly $1.0 million in revenue came from validator bond settlements, with unstake fees a small slice. For today's yield, see the live figures on this page.

Is Marinade Finance safe? Audits, upgrade authority and incidents

Marinade is one of Solana's oldest staking apps, and security firms have checked its code many times. But no staking app is risk-free. A small group of key holders can change Marinade's code. Marinade can move your Native stake, though it can't take it. And it has had two serious problems. A bug in its auction cost stakers rewards, and someone later tried to take over its DAO.

Marinade security audits and what each one covers

Marinade's audits page lists seven reviews by five firms. Each one checked a different piece of code:

• Kudelski Security, Ackee Blockchain and Neodyme reviewed the original protocol in 2021.
• Sec3 and Neodyme checked an upgrade to the main contract in November 2023.
• Neodyme checked the validator bond program in March and April 2024.
• Neodyme reviewed a canonical stake and deposit fee upgrade in May 2026 and reported no issues at any severity.

Marinade's Q3 report says a Neodyme-audited upgrade to the liquid staking program went live on 16 July 2026. Each audit covers only the code and version it names. The page lists no separate review of the Native staking proxy or of Borrow.

Who can upgrade Marinade's programs

Marinade's main programs can be changed after launch. None of them is locked. A multisig decides: a shared wallet that needs several key holders to sign. Marinade's contract addresses page says upgrades to the liquid staking program need six of its 13 signers.

The program behind Marinade Native is controlled by the Marinade council, per the same page. Three of its five members must sign. The DAO's voting programs use the same council. So no one person can change the code, but a small group can.

With Marinade Native, Marinade's own key can also move your stake. It can switch validators, split accounts or merge them. It cannot withdraw your SOL.

The 2025 SAM bid flaw and the September 2026 DAO governance attack

A bug in the auction once let validators cut their bids to almost nothing and keep their stake. It ran for 126 epochs before a partial fix in May 2025. A forum report from the Shiroi validator project put the cost at about 37,000 SOL in missed rewards. Rekt News gave the same figure. The loss was in rewards. The SOL people had staked was safe.

On 25 September 2026, an attacker found a bug in the DAO's voting program. They used it to file two harmful proposals. The council blocked both within about six hours, and no money moved. That account comes from Marinade's Q3 report and The Defiant. Marinade said its staking products were not affected, and a fix went out the same night. The council worked as a safety net here. It also shows how much power those five seats hold.

There is one more risk with any liquid token. In a market panic, mSOL can trade for less SOL than it is worth. An instant exit then costs more than usual.

Who should use Marinade, and who shouldn't

Marinade suits you if you want your SOL spread over many validators and don't want to pick them. Bonds then repay lost rewards if one of them goes down. Marinade Native fits if you want to keep SOL in your own wallet, even a Ledger. mSOL fits if you want a token to use in DeFi.

It fits less well in a few cases. With less than about 100 SOL, your Native stake lands on only a few validators. Instant exit from Native needs stake accounts at least two epochs old. And if you want to back one validator you trust, staking with it directly is simpler. PSR won't cover that stake, though.

Funds and other large holders are a core audience. Select gives them verified validators, SOC 2 reports and custody through partners such as BitGo and Anchorage.

Marinade vs Jito, Sanctum and other ways to stake SOL

Marinade's edge is its auction, its bonds and its zero fee on rewards. Jito runs a bigger liquid staking token, JitoSOL. It spreads stake over more validators. Jito's pool takes 4% of rewards. Marinade takes nothing from rewards, but it keeps most of the validators' bids. Our side-by-side stake pool comparison shows each pool's fee and yield. Marinade's Q3 report put it third among staking providers, behind Jito and Binance.

Sanctum works in a different way. It runs the tools behind many smaller liquid staking tokens, and lets you swap between them.

You can also skip a protocol and stake with one validator yourself. You keep full control, but you pick the validator, and no bond pays you if it goes down. You can compare validators by commission, uptime and stake on our site.

Solana Compass, which publishes this page, runs its own validator and its own liquid staking token, compassSOL. Our validator takes 0% of inflation rewards and 10% of MEV tips.

compassSOL stakes only with that one validator. It takes 2.5% of rewards plus 0.1% when you withdraw. mSOL spreads stake across many validators; compassSOL does not. You can see how staking with us works on our main page.

MNDE token and Marinade DAO governance

MNDE is Marinade's voting token. Holders lock it on Realms, a Solana voting app, to vote on Marinade DAO proposals. The DAO has voted on-chain since April 2022, per Marinade's FAQ.

There are 700 million MNDE in total, per the Marinade website. A passed proposal, MIP-22, sends a tenth of Marinade's revenue to buying MNDE on the market. In the third quarter of 2026, that bought about 4.2 million MNDE, per the quarterly report.

Holders who vote on proposals can also earn extra MNDE through a program Marinade calls Active Staking Rewards. A council of five sits next to the token vote. It can veto proposals, as it did in the September 2026 attack.

Marinade Finance history and funding

Marinade began at a Solana and Serum coding contest in the spring of 2021. mSOL came out that year. Marinade says it was first to bring liquid staking to Solana. Its FAQ says the team paid its own way, with help from Solana and Serum grants.

Since then, Marinade has grown from one token into a set of staking tools: Native, Recipes, Select and Borrow. In August 2026 it added Explore. This site has a page for each Solana validator. It shows what each one takes and any past problems.