Marinade

Marinade is a Solana staking protocol that lets SOL holders stake either natively, keeping full custody of their stake accounts, or through [[TOKEN:mSoLzYCxHdYgdzU16g5QSh3i5K3z3KZK7ytfqcJm7So]], a liquid staking token that can be used across Solana DeFi while it accrues rewards. Its distinguishing feature is how it chooses validators: all of Marinade's stake is allocated through a Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM), in which validators bid to offer stakers the highest yield and post bonds that guarantee it.

Background

Marinade started at a Solana hackathon in 2021 and, by its own account, shipped the first liquid staking token on Solana. The team describes itself as small and bootstrapped; its FAQ says the project is self-funded with help from ecosystem grants from Solana and Serum. Governance runs through the Marinade DAO, where holders lock the [[TOKEN:MNDEFzGvMt87ueuHvVU9VcTqsAP5b3fTGPsHuuPA5ey]] token on Realms to vote.

Products

Marinade's protocol overview lists three staking products that share the same delegation logic and pay rewards every epoch (roughly two days).

Marinade Native lets users stake SOL or deposit existing stake accounts while retaining ownership of their SOL at all times. Because the stake stays in the user's own stake accounts, Marinade describes it as carrying no smart contract risk. Stake is delegated automatically via SAM, and existing stake accounts can be redelegated without unstaking first.

Marinade Liquid issues mSOL in exchange for SOL. mSOL grows in value against SOL as rewards accrue, and can be traded on secondary markets or deployed in DeFi protocols. The Marinade website names Kamino, Orca and Raydium among the venues where mSOL is used.

Marinade Select is a curated validator set aimed at institutions. Anchorage Digital describes it as a compliance-focused strategy that delegates to roughly 30 KYC-verified validators, built for ETF issuers, asset managers and other regulated products that need a vetted validator set. Its automated counterpart for institutions is branded Marinade Max Yield.

Beyond SOL staking, Marinade offers a USDC yield product. Its website says users can deposit USDC and earn yield through [[PROJECT:303]] Lend without swapping or moving funds to an exchange. In September 2026 the team also introduced Marinade Explore, a dashboard for viewing Solana network performance by operator, data center provider, client, incident history and validator take rate.

How the Stake Auction Marketplace works

According to the SAM documentation, Marinade distributes 100% of its TVL through the auction. Each epoch, eligible validators are ranked by the maximum yield they offer at a given stake level, and stake is rebalanced toward the highest bidders. Validators can bid in two ways: a static bid, paid as a fixed cost per 1,000 SOL delegated per epoch from the validator's bond, or a dynamic commission bid that shares a set percentage of inflation rewards, MEV or block rewards with stakers.

The auction clears at a single price. The yield stakers receive equals the maximum yield offered by the lowest-ranked winning validator, so higher bidders pay only enough to match that clearing rate rather than their full bid. A single validator is capped at 15% of Marinade's TVL, a limit in place since epoch 946.

To participate, validators must fund a Protected Staking Rewards (PSR) bond. The bond is collateral: if stakers lose rewards through validator downtime or a commission change, the bond compensates them. The documentation lists further charges that can be taken from bonds, including penalties for reducing bids, fees on activating stake, and a bond risk mechanism triggered when a bond covers fewer than five epochs of obligations.

Fees

Per the FAQ, there is no deposit fee on any Marinade staking option and no performance fee on staking rewards. The protocol instead takes a 75% fee on the bid flow validators pay to receive stake. Delayed unstaking of mSOL costs 0.2% and makes SOL claimable after one epoch, with a minimum of 1.0043 SOL. Instant unstaking of mSOL carries no protocol fee but is subject to swap price impact. Instant unstaking from Marinade Native carries a dynamic fee set by market makers, typically 0.10% to 0.40%.

Security

Marinade's audits page lists six reviews:

• Kudelski Security, 2021, core protocol
• Ackee Blockchain, 2021, core protocol
• Neodyme, 2021, core protocol code review
• Sec3, November 2023, smart contract upgrade
• Neodyme, March to April 2024, Validator Bond program
• Neodyme, May 2026, canonical stake and deposit fee upgrade, which reported no issues at any severity level

The Marinade website also states that the company holds SOC 2 Type I and SOC 2 Type II certification.

Institutional adoption and metrics

Marinade has leaned into institutional staking. In April 2026 Anchorage Digital enabled clients to stake through Marinade Select or Max Yield from its platform and Porto self-custody wallet. The setup separates staking authority from withdrawal authority, so Marinade manages delegation while Anchorage Digital Bank keeps custody. The Marinade website also lists wallet integrations with Phantom, Solflare and Ledger, and custodians including BitGo, Zodia, Copper, Anchorage and Fireblocks.

SolanaFloor reported that Marinade Select's stake rose from 863,000 SOL in July 2025 to more than 1.6 million SOL in January 2026, helped by Solana ETF issuers such as Canary Capital staking through Marinade. The same report put mSOL at 5.18% of Solana's liquid staking token market, with 2.54 million mSOL in supply. It also reported a MNDE buyback program launched in August 2025 that removed more than $1.17 million of MNDE from circulation before the DAO redirected funds toward mSOL liquidity in December 2025. Marinade's current FAQ says that under MIP-22, 10% of protocol revenue funds programmatic MNDE buybacks.

Marinade's website cites more than 150,000 holders.

Place in the Solana ecosystem

Marinade is one of Solana's longest-running staking protocols, and its auction model makes validators compete openly on the yield they pass to stakers, with bonds backing those promises. The same delegation engine serves both retail users, through native staking and mSOL, and regulated institutions, through Marinade Select and custodian integrations.