Kitchen Stories: Monthly Roundup for July, 2024

Marinade unveiled its new website, highlighting new use cases for institutional clients as well as real-time protocol stats, informative graphics, DAO activity, and much more
The Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM) simulated bidding has had participation from over 150 validators as phase 2 draws near, with a winning APY of 9.2%+
Marinade Earn Season 3 participants have earned approximately 6.45M MNDE tokens
View detailed validator stats, scores, and more with Marinade’s Network Page

New Website Is Live

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One of the biggest highlights of July was the unveiling of the new Marinade website after months of cooking behind the scenes. The new homepage is complete with real-time protocol metrics as well as concise summaries of Marinade’s key features. More detailed information regarding these features, as well as Marinade’s roadmap, prominent partner integrations, and more, can be found under the “Product” tab.

The new website also places a more direct emphasis on institutional appeal. For example, in the “Customers” tab, you can find information about how institutional users, such as Treasuries, Wallets, Exchanges, and Custodians, can benefit from using Marinade’s staking infrastructure. Additionally, you can find detailed comparisons that show how Marinade’s features stack up against some of the largest alternative staking solutions on Solana.

All information about the Marinade DAO, including core members, the voting process, and active discussion forum, can be found within the “Governance” tab. And finally, the “Resources” tab contains a comprehensive list of information sources that cover everything related to Marinade, from educational information such as blog posts and documentation, to audit reports, to social media links and more. Be sure to check out the new site and let the team know what you think!

Stake Auction Marketplace Update

June’s Kitchen Stories included an important update on Marinade’s Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM). As a reminder, validators can now set simulated bids and max stake amounts in Marinade’s test environment.

As a quick update, the team is thrilled to announce that since the initial launch of this simulation on June 27th, over 150 validators have now participated in testing out the SAM bids and max stake functions. This shows significant interest in a product designed to not only help validators receive more stake, but also help Marinade’s native stakers earn outsized rewards. In fact, the winning APY has exceeded 9.2%! Looking ahead, phase 2 of the SAM, which adjusts the delegation strategy of Marinade native staking, just launched on August 14.

Marinade Earn Season 3 Update

We’re over halfway through Marinade Earn Season 3, and ~6.45 million MNDE tokens have been distributed to participants thus far! With over a month still remaining, there’s still potential to earn a lot more MNDE – after all, the cap for Season 3 is 25 million tokens.

Here are some stats for the two primary incentivized pools (as of August 8th):

Kamino vault for Raydium mSOL/SOL LP tokens:

$20.75M TVL
13.3% APY (currently higher than JitoSOL/SOL and bSOL/SOL vault APYs)
Over $61k in rewards paid out so far (through July 31st)

Solend (now Save) looping strategy for Meteora SOL/mSOL LP tokens:

$18.4M TVL
5.97% boosted APR (highest lending APR for all non-stablecoin main assets)

Network Page

We also want to call attention to our network page, which gives an inside look at key network and validator stats, including:

Validator scores
Network score based on aggregated validator scores
Validator location and ISP
Validator revenue and profitability
Validator APR

Marinade also assigns a score to each validator, which is based on metrics such as voting performance, block production, and DC delegation. These scores are combined to assign an aggregate network score as well:

Financial Update

Marinade TVL at the end of the month was 7.889M SOL (-3.71% MoM).

Revenue was 1,723 mSOL (-5.48% MoM), which is approximately $326,924 in USDC terms (+0.36% MoM). Specifically, 1,673 mSOL came from staking rewards and 49.51 mSOL came from unstaking fees.

Expenses were $210,378 (+15.41% MoM). Specifically, Marinade paid out $191,360 in USDC and $19,018 in MNDE (183,481 MNDE tokens).

After team-based expenses, Marinade operated at a profit of $239,084 (-10.29% MoM) during July. After all expenses, Marinade’s net profit for July was $116,546 (-18.77% MoM).

Finally, Marinade’s Treasury had a balance of $2,769,417 at the end of July (+25% MoM), with 44,083,640 MNDE tokens remaining in the 2nd milestone budget.