A Solana stake pool is an on-chain program that takes SOL from many people, stakes it across one or more validators, and gives each depositor a token for their share. That token is a liquid staking token (LST), such as JitoSOL. The pool's rewards make each token worth more SOL over time. You can redeem it for SOL, or trade it, whenever you like.
Stake pools exist to make staking simpler and to spread stake more widely. You don't pick a validator or manage stake accounts. The pool does that, and charges a fee for the work.
What Are Stake Pools on Solana?
Stake pools on Solana are shared stake accounts run by a program, most often the SPL stake pool program. Solana Labs wrote it so that anyone could launch a pool with the same audited code. Most pools on Solana use it or a fork of it.
A pool holds SOL in a reserve and in stake accounts with each of its validators. When you deposit, the pool mints you pool tokens. When you leave, it burns them and pays you back from the reserve or a stake account.
Pools come in two broad shapes. A multi-validator pool spreads stake across many operators by a set of rules. A single-validator pool stakes with one operator, usually the one that runs it. For how pool tokens behave once you hold them, see our guide to liquid staking tokens.
How Solana Stake Pools Work, Step by Step
A stake pool works in five steps: you deposit, the pool mints tokens, it stakes the SOL, rewards arrive each epoch, and the token's value rises. An epoch lasts about a day on Solana.
- You deposit SOL, or a stake account that is already active.
- The pool mints pool tokens to your wallet at the current exchange rate.
- The pool's staker moves the SOL from the reserve into validator stake accounts.
- At each epoch boundary, the validators' rewards land in those accounts.
- The pool updates its total, so each token is now backed by more SOL.
The exchange rate is the SOL the pool holds divided by the tokens in circulation. Say you deposit 100 SOL when one token is worth 1.25 SOL. You receive 80 tokens. If the pool earns about 5% over the next year, those same 80 tokens are worth about 105 SOL.
Three roles share the work, according to the stake pool overview. The manager creates the pool, sets its fees and earns them. The staker adds and removes validators and moves stake between them. You, the depositor, hold the tokens. To see where the rewards come from in the first place, read our explainer on how epochs and staking rewards work.
How Stake Pools Reduce the Impact of Validator Downtime
A stake pool spreads the cost of a bad validator across many, so one outage barely dents your rewards. If you stake natively with one validator and it goes offline, your stake earns nothing for that time. In a pool spread across a hundred validators, one outage touches a small slice of the pool.
Pools also watch their validators. Large pools remove operators that miss too many votes or raise their commission. That is work most native stakers never do, and it is a large part of what the pool's fee pays for.
The same logic cuts the other way for single-validator pools. They carry the full risk of their one operator. That can suit you if you know and trust the operator, which is the case with many validator-run LSTs.
Why Solana Has a Stake Pool Program: Decentralising Stake
Solana's stake pool program was built to help spread stake across more validators. Left alone, most people stake with the biggest names they know. A pool can follow a rule instead, such as "stake with many validators that do the job well and charge fair fees." That pushes stake out to smaller operators.
This matters for the whole network. No small group of validators should hold enough stake to stop the chain or steer it. Pools that delegate widely, such as Jito's, which uses hundreds of validators, push against that. A pool with a clear set of rules can also reward good behaviour, since operators know what they need to do to win stake.
Single-validator pools work the other way. They don't spread stake, but they let a small operator raise stake from its own community. That gives smaller validators a way to compete with the big ones.
If you'd rather direct your stake yourself, our notes on choosing a validator cover what to look for. For what operators earn and spend, see the economics of running a validator.
Solana Stake Pool Fees: What a Pool Can Charge
A stake pool can charge five kinds of fee, set by its manager. The SPL stake pool fee rules list them, and every pool's settings are public on-chain.
| Fee | What it takes |
|---|---|
| Epoch fee | A share of the rewards the pool earns each epoch |
| SOL deposit fee | A share of the pool tokens minted when you deposit SOL |
| Stake deposit fee | The same, when you deposit a stake account |
| SOL withdrawal fee | A share of the SOL you take out |
| Stake withdrawal fee | A share of a stake account you take out |
The epoch fee is the one that matters most. It comes out of rewards before they reach you, so it lowers your yield directly. Withdrawal fees are usually tiny, often a tenth of a percent, and exist to stop people jumping in just before rewards land and leaving straight after.
Two rules protect you. A change to any of these fees only takes effect after two epoch boundaries, so you have time to leave first. Withdrawal fees can't rise by more than half in one step. Your validators' own commission comes off before the pool's fee, so check both.
Are Stake Pools Safe? Could You Get Rugged?
A well-built stake pool can't simply take your SOL, but it is not risk-free. The SPL program keeps your SOL in stake accounts and a reserve that the manager can't withdraw from. Sanctum, which runs many pools on a fork of the program, says its management key "cannot steal your funds, even if compromised."
The SPL stake pool code has been audited 9 times by 5 firms: Kudelski, Neodyme, Quantstamp, OtterSec and Halborn, between 2021 and 2023. Forks inherit that code but may change it, so check which version a pool runs.
The manager does hold some powers. A manager can raise fees, with the two-epoch delay, and can require its own signature on SOL deposits or SOL withdrawals. Taking a stake account out stays open to you unless your token account is frozen. The other risks are the same as for any LST: a bug in the code, the token trading below its value in a rush to sell, or poor validators dragging on yield.
How to Join a Stake Pool and How to Leave
Joining a stake pool takes one transaction. The quickest route is to swap SOL for the pool's token on Jupiter or in your wallet's swap screen. You can also deposit on the pool's own site, which mints new tokens at the exact exchange rate.
Leaving works two ways. A swap back to SOL is instant, at the market price. A withdrawal from the pool gives you the full value, either as SOL from the reserve or as a stake account you then deactivate. That stake account unlocks at the end of the epoch. If you'd rather not wait, our guide to getting SOL out quickly compares the routes.
The Best Solana Stake Pools, and How to Compare Them
The best stake pool is the one whose validators, fees and exit route suit you, and those change over time. That is why our live stake pool rankings list every pool we track, with its size, fees, validators and yield history.
A few names come up most often. JitoSOL from Jito JTO$0.371-10.1% spreads stake across hundreds of validators and is accepted across Solana DeFi. Binance's BNSOL is the largest pool by SOL in our data. Sanctum CLOUD$0.044-10.6% runs many single-validator pools for operators, plus INF, a token backed by a basket of LSTs.
mSOL from Marinade MNDE$0.025-2.4% is the oldest large one, and it runs its own program rather than the SPL one. Marinade's fee page says stakers pay no rewards fee there. Validators bid for its stake instead.
When you compare pools, look at four things.
- The epoch fee and the withdrawal fee.
- How many validators the pool uses, and how it picks them.
- How long it has run, and whose audits cover its code.
- Whether its token trades with enough depth for the amount you hold.
For the other ways to put your SOL to work, the Solana Compass staking hub has every route in one place.
