Introducing the next chapter for the Marinade Community

Greetings Marinade family, I am Data, your new Community Manager and I’m delighted to be joining you all in the kitchen. I’ve been following Marinade for a while now and have always held the project in high regard for its commitment to onboarding new Solana DeFi users. The new branding and NFT Chefs are pretty sweet, too!

So much has changed on Solana and throughout crypto since Marinade minted mSOL in August of 2021. The MNDE token launched in October and April of 2022, on-chain DAO governance and NFT Chefs were born. And now on-chain gauges have created a true community, decentralizing Solana together and enabling additional MNDE token utility. Throughout it all, community has been at the forefront, helping to drive the DAO forward through engagement in Discord and on the forum.

Today, the DAO is announcing a brand new makeover of the community that reflects the evolution of not only Marinade but the greater Solana ecosystem.

But first, allow me to share a little bit about your new community manager.

Data: New Marinade Community Manager

I’ve been participating in crypto in since 2017 and have seen my fair share of excitement, crashes, airdrops, rugs and everything in between. While I started out in ETH during the DeFi summer, I’ve since migrated to Solana. No other chain has ever welcomed me like Solana has. A lot of the people I have met here experienced the same through meeting great builders and people who truly care about providing value (remember Pit Viper on Solana? That was truly an epic time to live through!).

During Solana airdrop mania I was involved in several communities like COPE and ROPE. I was particularly intrigued by Fabric, which was planning synthetic commodities on Solana, and I joined them in the fall of 2021 as a moderator.

Nine months later, some mismanagement of the treasury led to Fabric’s downfall. I stuck around until the very end providing support for the community and was even asked to take over as the lead and salvage what was left. I declined and chose to step away for two weeks and spend time with my family and reflect on everything that happened.

During this time I was lucky enough to be approached by some amazing DeFi protocols on Solana. I am happy to say that before even considering any other protocol, I had my mind set on Marinade and feel extremely lucky to be here! When working with Fabric I got to know Marinade because the project was what we were aspiring to be. The Chefs rebrand in January was something we always referred to when it came to our vision of professionalism in the space. This was on top of the mission Marinade strives to push every day. While most projects are looking to take value out of the ecosystem, Marinade is doing the complete opposite while strengthening the health of the network and promoting decentralization. What we achieve together will bear fruit for everyone across Solana.

Marinade Community Changes

I’m honored to be joining the Marinade community and working with c2yptic, who has helped drive community to this point, along with Ryfo, who also recently joined the DAO as an NFT ecosystem expert to help combine the power of Solana DeFi with the vibes of NFT projects and their vibrant communities. Not to mention all our SoMEMEliers!

As all of us in the community collaborated with one another, three main changes to the Discord roles and organization within Marinade were made.

New Discord roles!

Degen Marinator role and Channel: The goal of the Degen Marinator role and channel is to gather those in the Marinade kitchen who want to test new forms of Solana NFT and token dishes out there. While some dishes might taste bad, some dishes might be surprisingly delicious! Try them together with your fellow Degens and at your own risk! With these exclusive opportunities from developing projects on Solana we hope to be able to form good and valuable relationships within the ecosystem to strengthen the Marinade Chef culture.

The Raw role (reserved for new members who have not verified their Chef), is changing to Marinator role.

The former Marinator role, reserved for verified Chef NFT holders (and therefore DAO members), is changing to the Chef role. After all, the Marinade Chef NFT holders (those who locked their MNDE tokens and minted the Marinade Chef NFT) are part of the DAO, and part of making sure the dishes served from the Marinade kitchen has the best Marinade and seasoning! Having a Marinade Chef NFT, means that you are a Chef that is helping Marinade with cooking up the best decentralized dishes on Solana, making Solana more valuable, secure and … tasty!

The Chef role, previously reserved for those actively working in the DAO, will change to Master Chef.

The sum of these changes will open the door to creating a stronger Chef culture within the community and when it comes to representing and showcasing who we are in the eye of the public.

I know that for many of us in crypto right now, it might have been a little more exciting in the fall of 2021 when it was Up Only. Today there is more fear and many of us have been rekt with the loss of a role on a team, a community going dark, or seeing tokens drop. The silver lining is the strong communities that remain stand out during these downturns and can capitalize on the opportunities. The Marinade community is positioned to absorb those who want to stay within the ecosystem, but feel they haven’t found a community to identify with yet or who were abandoned by one they were once a part of.

As Chefs, let’s all be sure to welcome anyone curious about Crypto, NFTs, DeFi and liquid staking to our community!

It’s amazing to think that Marinade, despite only being live for less than a year on mainnet, feels like an OG on Solana as the first liquid staking protocol. From here, it’s up to the Marinade community to not only grow itself, but to lend its wealth of DeFi knowledge to all the growing and prosperous NFT communities on Solana. Even though there are over 7 million mSOL minted on the market, liquid staking nevertheless represents just about ~3% of all stake. Imagine just how prosperous Solana NFTs and DeFi could be if we unlocked all that liquidity and decentralization potential. Together, we can tell this story and drive the prosperity of the ecosystem forward, and have quite a bit of fun doing it!

See you in the Marinade Discord, Chefs and Marinators!