Marinade Kitchen Stories

Chefs in the holiday spirit (by Chef Massimiliano)

The recent holidays gave many Chefs some time to touch some grass (or snow) and reflect on a whirlwind 2022. In spite of all the turmoil in the markets, Marinade accomplished so much over the course of the year! It was rewarding to look back at some (but hardly all) of the highlights shipped by Marinade in 2022. Take a trip down memory lane in this thread:

As for December, Marinade shipped numerous items before the break. ICYMI, here is a look back on some highlights served up in the kitchen:

Introducing the Validator Dashboard

In an effort to provide more insight and transparency into Solana validators and Marinade’s stakepool composition and performance, The Master Chefs were pleased to deliver the first version of the Validator Dashboard! While a lot of these stats have been available via Marinade’s open-source Github, it hasn’t been available in a very digestible way … until now! The Dashboard can be viewed from the validator page and you can view details of all Solana validators and even compare their APYs or other metrics. You can also view a validator’s “real” commission historically. Marinade has been able to identify validators cheating at the epoch boundary (a growing occurrence since the FTX-Alameda collapse), and can now prove which validators are cheating stakers out of their staking rewards. You can read more about it in this thread.

Take a spin around the new Dashboard, and if you would like to see any new statistics or visuals, Marinade is already busy adding elements for a v2, so let us know in the community!

Future of MNDE token and TVL: Liquidity mining and Open Doors program

Over the second half of 2022 there was a lot of analysis and focus on mSOL and MNDE tokens. What is working, where is the utility, and how can we improve it? In q4 there was much discussion in Marinade about MNDE Liquidity Mining. Was it driving mSOL adoption or TVL? The results of the research have shown that it has not had a significant impact. Combined with added liquidity now available on Coinbase, many MNDE holders voted to send 77% liquidity mining allocations back to the treasury. And as of January 10th, the mDAO has voted on reducing liquidity mining emissions by 75%. (If you had been voting for the treasury gauge, please consider revoting here).

This brings us to a new incentives program for 2023 that was passed by mDAO in December. Marinade has a long-term goal to be owned by the leading players of the ecosystem, and the Open Doors Program will aim to distribute MNDE in a more meaningful way by incentivizing protocols and validators to promote mSOL usage on their platforms and in return receive MNDE distributions. A maximum of 160M MNDE will be eligible for rewards of 40M SOL staked through Marinade in the program.

Marinade is putting the final touches on the Open Doors Program which will go into effect officially on February 1st for 12 months.

Latest on MEV and mTransaction

Around the time of Breakpoint in November, Marinade introduced its plans for MEV. Since then, Solana has successfully introduced stake-weighted Quality of Service, local fee markets and QUIC. Early on, it appears to be having a positive effect on the blockchain performance, as evidenced by the reliability of the network during the recent surge in trading due to the BONK airdrop and trading spike.

Right now Marinade is in a closed beta for mTransaction, its blockchain bandwidth marketplace, and is working out its go-to-market strategy and receiving feedback from the participants. This is one of the most exciting developments in Solana DeFi right now and Marinade is eager to release the public product soon.

Liquid Unstake pool parameter changes

Another mDAO proposal that was voted on and executed was the Liquid Unstake Pool parameter change.

The new parameters begins to raise the fee from 0.3% when the pool drops below 150k SOL, and the fees rise linearly to 9% until the pool is emptied. (Previously, the parameters were .3% to 3%, starting from under 100k SOL).

The liquid unstake pool is a key product for Marinade. It enables mSOL holders to unstake instantly and maintain greater market liquidity than other liquid staking tokens. Despite the pool size generally holding around 400,000 SOL, the market crash in November during the FTX insolvency depleted the pool entirely (which did bring the mDAO record mSOL revenues), and the Master Chefs used the event to reassess the pool structure. Supply SOL to this pool via the “Marinade Staking” tab on the DeFi page.

Marinade Financial update

The month of December brought to Marinade 1,894 mSOL (for a dollar value of $23,012), split between Staking fees (1,606 mSOL) and Unstake fees (288 mSOL).

In terms of expenses, some efforts were made to reduce the final amount again, and Marinade spent $96,464 in USDC and 263,051 MNDE (for a dollar value of $23,674). This totals a $-73,672 balance for December.

Considering the price of SOL since the fallout over FTX-Alameda, Marinade plans to apply changes in 2023 to the way contributors are compensated and is in talks with parties in the ecosystem about addressing its short-term runway through a variety of options in order to ensure it can continue building into the foreseeable future.

As a reminder, all the wallets of Marinade are public and can be found here: DeFi | Treasury

mDAO marketing budget update

In 2022, the mDAO passed a 4-million MNDE annual marketing budget, and part of the proposal is to share updates with the mDAO to show where the MNDE is being spent.

So far, the majority of the budget has not been spent and is on hold waiting for the right market timing and opportunity. Marinade has provided several small amounts of MNDE to other protocols for giveaways (such as the popular ALR racing events, as well as weekly meme contests in our community that help us spread Kitchen love throughout social media. In addition to this, Marinade utilized the budget to run an educational campaign and giveaway with Solana Insiders, a reputable educational telegram group, which included some social media paid spend from that account, which delivered a significant amount of impressions to Marinade. The campaign began in early November and was ultimately paused before completion due to the FTX market crash.

Marinade continues to compensate two ambassadors with monthly Chef NFTs for their help promoting Marinade in their communities, advising on marinade products and initiatives, as well as outreach into the ecosystem.

The largest marketing expense so far was signed at the end of 2022. Marinade is trialing an outside firm to assist with its goals and messaging to institutions and larger potential partnerships. Marinade sees a lot of TVL opportunity among SOL holders and institutions as Solana DeFi matures and Marinade’s open-source stake pool smart contract gains more trust during its time in the market. This is a three-month trial that will measure impact by success in advanced relationships and awareness specifically with large Solana holders.

Most recently, Marinade is also participating in the announced Helius-Lamport DAO Sandstorm hackathon and is planning to use a mix of grant committee and additional marketing funds if needed to assist with the liquid staking tracks Marinade sees real opportunity in benefiting the mDAO.

Governance update: Contributors elect a Board

Following the update of the main smart contract multisig in November, the core team took another step in distributing power to key Marinade stakeholders by holding its first board elections. The intent of the board is to pass more power from the founding team over to core contributors and also update the 7-wallet treasury multisig. The results were conducted by all full-time contributors and elected a new board of three founders and four core contributors, and the multisig was updated.

The board’s immediate tasks are to improve internal communications flow among the contributors and within the DAO, revisit the organizational structure and contributor incentives design and find 2023 alignment over goal setting and key performance metrics.

That’s it for December. We hope you had a restful holiday break wherever you may be. ICYMI, Marinade posted a New Year’s Eve thread full of favorite memes and partnerships among the ecosystem. We had such a fun year with you all despite all of the turmoil, and we’re battle-tested and ready to rise to new heights in 2023. Check it out!