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What is Marinade?
6 min read · updated 25 May 2026
Marinade is one of the original liquid staking protocols on Solana, launched in 2021. It solves a basic tension in proof-of-stake: staking SOL secures the network and earns rewards, but normally locks the capital up. Marinade lets you stake and keep something liquid to use elsewhere.
The staking problem it solves
When you stake SOL directly, you delegate to a single validator and your SOL is committed — to unstake you wait through a cooldown. You also have to pick a good validator yourself. Liquid staking abstracts both away: you stake into a pool, the pool spreads your SOL across many validators, and you get a token back that you can use immediately.
mSOL and Marinade Native
- mSOL. Stake SOL with Marinade and you receive mSOL, a token representing your stake plus accruing rewards. mSOL's value grows against SOL over time as rewards compound, and you can trade it, lend it, or use it as collateral across DeFi while it keeps earning. (Compare with JitoSOL, which also captures MEV tips.)
- Marinade Native. A non-custodial option that stakes directly to validators on your behalf without issuing a token — closer to staking yourself, but with Marinade's automated validator selection and no smart-contract custody of your stake. The trade-off is you give up the liquid mSOL token.
Decentralisation as a design goal
Liquid staking carries a systemic worry: if one pool controls too much stake, it concentrates influence over consensus. Marinade leans hard the other way — it spreads stake across a large, performance-screened set of validators using a delegation strategy designed to reward good, decentralised operators rather than piling onto the biggest few. That makes it a notable contributor to Solana's validator decentralisation, not just a yield product.
The MNDE token
MNDE is Marinade's governance token, used to steer the protocol — including parameters of the validator-delegation strategy. You don't need MNDE to stake.
Risks to keep in mind
- Smart-contract risk on the staking contracts (Marinade Native reduces custody exposure but not all risk).
- Depeg risk. mSOL can trade slightly below its "fair" SOL value during stress or thin liquidity; it's redeemable for the underlying stake, but the market price can wobble.
- Validator/slashing considerations inherent to staking, mitigated by spreading across many validators.
For the latest Marinade news, see the Marinade project page — or learn how staking works first.
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