Marinade Kitchen Stories - February 24, 2022

Hello everyone, given the developing state of affairs in Ukraine we hope this post finds you safe. Marinade’s thoughts and prayers are with all who are over there and potentially in harms way.

The Chefs have returned with an update on all things Marinade. The amount of building and milestones across Solana continues to persevere. In fact, it was just confirmed this week that Solana has passed 1,500 validators. It’s a milestone that is great for the longterm health and censorship resistance of Solana. Hacker Houses are happening across the world this spring and the Solana Riptide Hackathon is ongoing. Who will win Marinade’s $30,000 prize?

Marinade is pushing forward on numerous items, from app updates to new partnerships and our anticipated governance through NFTs. Check out what’s coming out of the kitchen.

Marinade NFT Governance is coming soon!

The main course in the kitchen currently is the completion of the NFT DAO Governance project for the MNDE token, which is expected launch within the next couple weeks. Following the Marinade 2022 Roadmap post, additional details regarding governance can be found in the latest post about what to expect, Non-fungible Chefs. You can read the post, or allow the crab below to illustrate the process:

Token holders who lock up their MNDE (1,000 tokens minimum) will receive an NFT they can hold and showcase in their PFPs or elsewhere. There will also be opportunities to trade it on secondary markets. But remember: if you send someone else your NFT, you’ve also sent them all the underlying MNDE locked inside it.

The Chefs recently held an Open Kitchen in the Discord server to share highlights from the kitchen since our last one and answer initial questions about DAO governance. You can watch it in its entirety on our YouTube channel.

mDAO moving ahead with Goblin Gold proposal

On February 7th, the GoblinGold project submitted a new partnership proposal to the Marinade forum. After opening the proposal up to a feedback period, the Executive Team has decided to move forward with this partnership.

What is GoblinGold? GoblinGold DAO is a crypto growth engine that leverages customized risk strategies to generate DeFi yield. They aim to build a series of sustainable mSOL strategies and integrate them into Marinade’s UI.

They seek a close partnership with the mDAO, offering 5% of tokens and 50% of revenue generated from mSOL assets in exchange for Marinade’s marketing and smart contract/UI assistance in bringing this concept to reality. Curious what GoblinGold is all about? See their team’s initial strategy, “BestAPY” for a sense of how they plan to elevate Marinade.

The comment period will be open for another seven days and all are welcomed to share additional feedback. Visit the Forum to comment or read more about GoblinGold’s plans.

Marinade app updates

Continued improvements to the Marinade app are being made in order to make the experience more intuitive and robust for all users. A couple highlights:

Estimated earnings: On the staking page, an estimator has been added that shows stakers how much they can expect to make on their mSOL depending on the duration and size of their position.Marinade is also aware that there are many SOL holders out there who began staking with one delegator before they heard about liquid staking at Marinade. The team has made it incredibly easy to convert your stake into a liquid stake and get mSOL to deploy in DeFi instantly! Just connect your wallet and if the wallet and the Marinade app will identify it and prompt the user to delegate it to Marinade’s decentralizing algorithm and provide mSOL to use in return! Check it out:

Aldrin integrates Marinade

Aldrin Exchange, a new Solana-based protocol that you may recall recently joined the Marinade Discord for an AMA, just announced they will use Marinade for liquid staking and have added mSOL to their pools. Check out Marinade in action on their DEX here.Speaking of integrations, The Solana Hackathon is still going on and developers are invited to submit a project for a chance to win $30,000 from Marinade! The mission? Marinade seeks to extend its reach by inviting developers to contribute towards integrating its liquid staking SDK into other Solana platforms. Read about the details here.

Liquidity Mining Allocations for the next two weeks

Marinade is hiring!

Partnerships are essential for Marinade to achieve its lofty 2022 goals and the team continues to grow. In fact, The Chefs are seeking to hire a Head of Partnerships. This position will hit the ground running and deliver mSOL to more top Solana protocols and grow TVL. Check out the official job posting here and if you’re ready to join the kitchen, apply!

ALR’s Marinade Island comes to life

You can never be too sure where this crypto-NFT journey will take you next. For many Marinators, the most recent adventure was a fast-paced trip around Marinade Island!

It was thanks to Alpha League Racing, a Solana-based P2E game. In their latest release (№7). They created a private event and a special Marinade-branded course for Marinators to take on. ALR also provided Marinade with an NFT car to give away to our Twitter audience. Be sure to follow Marinade to be the first to know about upcoming giveaways!

UPDATE: The team at ALR extended the Marinade private race event by two days. There is still time to compete and try and take down the winning time of 41 seconds over two laps of Marinade Island currently held by Marinator ‘Avram’! Can you beat it? Visit this Discord event link and be sure to be a verified Marinator (the whitelist is updated daily).

How do you meme?

Looking for some crypto frens to commiserate with about red charts? Pop into the #meme channel in Marinade Discord and browse the complexity of human emotions that accompany the crypto journey. Submit your own memes to an audience that appreciates great memes!

GIF submitted by ‘Socrates’ in Marinade’s Meme Channel

Guide to using mSOL in DeFi

Thanks to our friend and validator Cogent Crypto for the recent article on mSOL! Cogent has shared some past articles about how to become a Solana validator and provided some additional insight on staking rewards strategies. In the latest article, Cogent shares a few ideas for earning yield with mSOL, ranging from yield farming and liquidity pools to using leverage to your advantage with a more complex strategy called “Looping.” Check it out!

Another method to consider for building your mSOL position is thru volts. You may remember Friktion from their recent AMA in the kitchen. Their Covered Call Vault currently has over $9 million in mSOL.Friktion Volt’s Covered Call strategy uses mSOL.

Where’s Marinade?

And finally, here’s a neat community project in the NFT space on Solana of which Marinade played a part. Cryptograf created the first ever Solana community NFT by inviting everyone to come draw on the pixelated canvas together. Our artist Elli was of course a part of the action. Can you spot the Marinade Octopus? (Here’s a hint, lower-left quadrant).

Stay tuned for more updates and be sure to follow us on Twitter or stay tuned to Discord to hear the latest events and news happening from the kitchen!

About Marinade

Marinade.Finance is the first non-custodial liquid staking protocol built on Solana. Stake your SOL tokens with Marinade and receive mSOL (“marinated SOL”) tokens in return that can be used in decentralized finance (DeFi). mSOL is the most widely integrated collateralized version of SOL. The price of mSOL goes up relative to SOL each epoch, with rewards being accrued into your stake account.

Marinade’s delegation strategy stakes to 400+ validators that are selected automatically by an open-source, fair formula based on performance, commission, and decentralization.

Marinade includes mSOL->SOL swap, so you can “Unstake Now” and receive your SOL immediately for a small fee. You can also directly exchange between mSOL and SOL on secondary markets at the current rate. Finally, you can unstake your SOL with zero fee by waiting 2–3 days for the Solana cool-down period (Delayed Unstake).