Marinade

Marinade is a staking service for Solana. It does not run validators itself; it decides which validators receive the SOL its users stake and moves that stake every epoch, which on Solana lasts about a day. Users can either keep their SOL in stake accounts they control (Marinade Native and Marinade Select) or deposit it into a pool and receive mSOL, a token that represents the staked position and can be used in other Solana apps.

The project started with Solana ecosystem grants at a 2021 Solana hackathon and launched mSOL on mainnet in August 2021, according to its documentation. Its terms of use say the website and services are operated by Medium Rare Foundation, a foundation established in Panama; the documentation also refers to a separate Marinade Labs treasury used for operations. Marinade does not publish a list of founders or executives. Its contributors are organized into engineering, product, partnerships, business operations, marketing and management teams.

MNDE is the governance token. It was minted in 2021 with no token sale, and holders lock it to vote on the DAO's treasury and on most of the protocol's programs. The DAO burned 300 million of the original 1 billion MNDE under proposal MIP-14, leaving about 700 million, and the mint authority has been set to null, so no more can be created. Under MIP-22, 10% of protocol revenue buys MNDE on the open market each quarter for holders who lock it and have voted in the past year.

Both the native and liquid products delegate through Marinade's Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM). Each epoch, validators bid for stake by offering part of their earnings, and to take part they must post a bond in SOL. The auction charges a winning validator only what is needed to deliver the clearing yield to stakers. Marinade Select works differently: a curated group of validators signs bilateral agreements, and Marinade takes 30 basis points of annual yield on that stake through bond claims.

The bond also funds Protected Staking Rewards. If a validator in the pool has extended downtime, raises its commission mid-epoch, or is left out of the reward committee, the shortfall is paid to stakers from that validator's bond. Since epoch 1040, under MIP-23, validators cover 100% of downtime losses beyond a 1% grace threshold, and the DAO no longer pays any share. Solana has no slashing today, so this is compensation for missed rewards rather than protection against a loss of principal.

mSOL is a reward-bearing token. Its balance never changes; instead, its exchange rate against SOL rises each epoch as rewards are added. The price is the total SOL staked divided by the mSOL in circulation, and on 24 October 2026 Marinade's public API put it at 1.414 SOL, with a trailing 30-day yield of 4.99%. Because the API returns the start and end prices of the period, anyone can recompute that yield rather than rely on the figure in the app. You can also turn an existing stake account into mSOL if it is at least 1 SOL, fully active and delegated to a validator in Marinade's set.

For readers comparing Solana liquid staking tokens, Jito is the most direct alternative, and how Marinade compares with other liquid staking tokens is covered in our ratings.

Marinade charges nothing to deposit and, as of October 2026, takes no share of staking rewards: the stake pool's on-chain reward fee is 0. The Marinade Council can change that parameter within limits set by the DAO, and the program caps it at 10%. Costs arise when you leave, and on the USDC vault.

Solana network fees apply on top. The flat 0.003 SOL native exit fee is small on a large position but material on a very small one.

Marinade is a non-custodial app with no account sign-up, but its terms of use set strict eligibility rules. They list more than 60 restricted countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan, China, Russia and Cuba, plus countries under US, EU or OFAC sanctions, and they exclude citizens and residents of those places. The terms also say users should be sophisticated, professional or accredited investors, or otherwise exempt under securities law. The terms are governed by the law of Panama, with disputes going to arbitration seated in Hong Kong.

On the wallet side, Marinade works with Solana wallets such as Phantom, Solflare and Backpack, and with Ledger, Trezor or Keystone through a compatible browser wallet. Native instant unstaking is not available in Fireblocks, MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet; holders in those wallets must use the delayed route.

Control is split into four layers, each documented with on-chain addresses. A 6-of-13 ecosystem multisig is the only body that can upgrade the main mSOL program. Its signers include Jupiter, Orca, Phantom, Raydium, Solflare, Solend, Mango, Staking Facilities, Triton, Miton C and three Marinade team slots, so Marinade cannot reach the threshold alone. The MNDE DAO on Realms, with a 2% quorum, controls upgrades and settings for Native, Select, Validator Bonds, Recipes and the other programs. A 3-of-5 Marinade Council handles day-to-day parameters and spending within DAO budgets but cannot upgrade code, and the same five people act as an emergency council that can only pause the mSOL and bond programs.

The documentation lists audits by Kudelski Security and Ackee Blockchain (2021), a Neodyme code review (2021), Neodyme and Sec3 audits of the November 2023 contract upgrade, a Neodyme audit of the Validator Bonds program (March to April 2024) and a Neodyme review in May 2026 of canonical stake accounts and a deposit fee feature, which reported no issues. The homepage states Marinade holds SOC 2 Type I and Type II certification; we did not see the reports. An Immunefi bug bounty pays up to $250,000 for critical bugs, but its formal scope covers only the liquid staking program. Native Staking Proxy, Validator Bonds and Directed Stake are outside it. Marinade does not describe any insurance for user funds.

The risk that has actually cost users money is liquidity, not backing. On 12 December 2023 a holder sold about $8 million of mSOL in roughly twenty minutes and the token fell about 15% below its SOL value, which set off liquidations on lending markets that accepted mSOL as collateral, according to Solana Compass. The SOL behind mSOL was untouched. As of October 2026 Marinade's own liquidity pool holds only about 5,960 SOL, so a large instant exit depends on DEX depth routed through Jupiter. Our explainer on why liquid staking tokens lose their peg covers the mechanics.

Other risks Marinade itself lists are smart contract bugs, Solana outages or congestion, validator underperformance, MEV and front-running, and the risk that Solana introduces slashing in future. The USDC Earn vault lends through Kamino, so it adds that protocol's risk. Marinade is non-custodial: it never holds user keys, and native stakers keep withdraw authority over their own stake accounts.

Staking happens at app.marinade.finance with a connected Solana wallet. There is no deposit fee, and for native staking the SOL stays in stake accounts the user controls. Rewards arrive each epoch: native stakers see them in their stake accounts, and mSOL holders see them as a rising exchange rate, with nothing to claim.

There are two ways out. Delayed unstake schedules the stake to deactivate at the next epoch boundary; after about one epoch the SOL becomes claimable and you must return to the app to claim it. An mSOL request made in the last two hours of an epoch waits until the end of the following one. Instant unstake pays out in the same transaction: native positions are taken over by liquidity providers who quote a price, and mSOL is swapped to SOL through Jupiter or Marinade's pool. The app shows the quote before you sign. Native instant exits need at least 1 SOL in a stake account that has been active for two epochs.

Marinade offers support through its Help Center at help.marinade.finance and through tickets in its Discord server. Its official links page says Marinade will never message users first, never ask for a seed phrase or private key, and never ask anyone to validate, sync or migrate a wallet, and that support never happens in direct messages. The only staking app address it lists is app.marinade.finance. Native instant unstaking can make a wallet show an unfamiliar address or a warning; Marinade says that is expected only when the user started the action on that domain.

Marinade's history runs from a hackathon project to a protocol that now earns its revenue from validators rather than stakers.

• 2021: founded with Solana ecosystem grants at a Solana hackathon.
• August 2021: mSOL and the liquid staking protocol launch on mainnet; MNDE is minted later that year with no token sale.
• April 2022: on-chain DAO governance begins.
• July 2023: governance moves to Realms.
• November 2023: smart contract upgrade, audited by Neodyme and Sec3.
• December 2023: an $8 million sale briefly pushes mSOL about 15% below its SOL value.
• April 2024: Protected Staking Rewards and validator bonds introduced.
• May 2026: Neodyme reviews the canonical stake and deposit fee changes.
• 2026: MIP-23 moves all downtime compensation onto validator bonds from epoch 1040.