Marinade Kitchen Stories - March, 2024
Read more about what happened in the kitchen throughout March.
March was a great month at Marinade as several milestones were achieved, DAO votes were passed and the Chefs got to have some IRL time at several crypto events. The team attended the Digital Asset Summit in London as well as the Solana Hacker House in New York.
As Solana activity has picked up, March saw an all-time high in TVL for Marinade at over $2 billion in USD.
It’s a big second quarter for Marinade as Protected Staking Rewards and the new Delegation Strategy are rolled out in April, and an all-new Marinade v2 vision is taking shape and shared. Here are some highlights:
Earn Season 2 completed
Marinade Earn Season 2 was completed at the end of March, and if you participated now it’s time to claim your MNDE.
In Season 2, there were two bonuses: Governors and Validators bonuses. Locked MNDE holders could vote to direct stake and earn more MNDE, while validators earn MNDE based on their Marinade score.
You have until June 30 to claim your MNDE in Season 2 (all unclaimed Season 1 rewards were returned to the treasury). To claim your season 2 MNDE, visit the rewards tab in the Marinade dApp. https://marinade.finance/app/rewards/
The MNDE is sent as locked MNDE where you can participate in DAO governance and use your voting power for Directed Stake. To unlock it, you must initiate an unlocking process from Realms. Be advised the Solana network is currently highly congested and it may take several tries to land transactions during this time.
March Treasury Report
The Marinade protocol earned 2,453 mSOL for the month (+16.8% MoM), generating $474,144 in USD (+83%), a new revenue record. Expenses for the month were $170,536 (+67%), paid out in USDC besides 14,806 MNDE. By generating a profit of over $300,000 on the month, the total treasury balance is now $3,092M (+17) and the operational wallet now holds over $1 million in stables and 12 months worth of runway.
The DAO is using this strengthened position to invest in additional marketing and development operations in Q2 and discuss with its advisors on how this growth can benefit MNDE holders. You can view the operational wallet balances which include several active Solana DeFi positions here: https://sonar.watch/portfolio/89SrbjbuNyqSqAALKBsKBqMSh463eLvzS4iVWCeArBgB
PSR & Delegation Strategy Update
In March, two proposals passed in the DAO, setting up the next steps for the delegation strategy update and protected staking rewards. Here are the next steps:
In early April, the new delegation strategy will be implemented and made live.
Mid-April: Upon completion of the Neodyme audit of the PSR bond, validators will be asked to fund their bond to continue receiving Marinade stake, and any performance losses to stakers will be fully covered by the validator as well as Marinade if needed. Over 350 validators have established their bond so far, which will let Marinade further decentralize the Solana network through its stake delegation strategy.
Before the audit is complete and bonds are funded, PSR dry runs are currently being posted to the #psr-feed in Marinade’s Discord: https://discord.com/invite/yTdH8YkYKg.
Here you can see any validators who had enough performance loss to warrant their bond cover losses. For example, you can see in the Epoch 596 report, several validators who would have triggered a payment from their bond for commission changes or uptime issues. Affected validators can assess the findings and discuss them with Marinade in the #validators channel.
Open Doors Program Completed
The Open Doors Program, a 12-month campaign to reward ecosystem protocols and validators with MNDE for TVL growth of Marinade, concluded. In total, 2,572,149 MNDE were distributed to the ecosystem through mSOL growth in DeFi, directed stake or referrals. During the campaign, Marinade achieved TVL as high as over 11 million SOL, up from 6.1M at the campaign’s start. 16,325,558 MNDE earmarked for Open Doors distribution will be sent back to the DAO treasury, in addition to the 61.9M MNDE that was returned in November.
You can view the final details of the payouts on the forum: https://forum.marinade.finance/t/proposal-launch-160m-mnde-open-doors-tvl-program/398/50
With Earn Season 2 and Open Doors completed, Marinade’s core team is examining the best way to incentivize growth on Solana for 2024 paired with its big updates to announce this quarter.
