Marinade Kitchen Stories - May 2024

It’s been a travel-heavy May as Marinade Chefs have participated in events from Turkey (Solana Crossroads) to Crete (Island DAO) and Austin, Texas (Consensus). There’s been a lot of work to do in between meetups, with big updates coming to the DAO and the protocol’s delegation strategy. In fact Marinade is currently in the process of expanding its team to ramp up development as it fulfills the exciting vision of Marinade v2 staking! (Stay tuned for all the details).

Check out the latest monthly update for May in case you missed any of the action:

2 DAO proposals pass

Two DAO votes were held in May and both passed. Here’s what’s coming to Marinade as a result:

New Delegation Strategy: Community member fsiroky introduced the new design on the Marinade forum which can be read here. The biggest change is the introduction of a Stake Auction Marketplace which lets validators bid for stake. By design, each validator in the Marinade delegation set will only pay as much as the least-yielding validator in the delegation set. This updated delegation strategy will also bring predictability to validators, allowing them to easily know if they will receive Marinade stake or not. Rebalancing will also be reworked to be more efficient and faster.

The Marinade core team is now working to integrate the new delegation strategy and will announce when it’s ready to be live, which is expected in early Q3.

Marinade Earn Season 3: Get ready for another edition of Marinade Earn. The DAO has approved the third season which will look different than the first two seasons. This will be a 25M MNDE campaign that incentivizes mSOL liquidity in Solana DeFi with additional MNDE rewards on protocols Kamino, Solend and Meteora.

Stay tuned to announcements as this campaign will be live very soon.

Protected Staking Rewards Update

Protected Staking Rewards is now live and protecting all Marinade Native and mSOL holders’ staking rewards. Since going live in Epoch 609, PSR has recovered over 100 total SOL in rewards that would have been lost due to validator downtime. Several epochs have seen over 10 SOL worth of staking rewards recovered for stakers. Follow PSR’s performance at psr.marinade.finance/

Validators interested in setting up their bond can visit one of Marinade’s upcoming “office hours” where chefs can answer any questions about PSR and the upcoming delegation strategy. The first one will be held in Discord on June 13th at 4pm UTC. You can set a reminder for office hours here.

Monthly Treasury Report

Marinade TVL at the end of the month was 8.427M SOL (-17% MoM). Revenue was 1,883.3 mSOL, $351,699 in USDC terms (-5.6% MoM). Expenses were $232,297 (+38) as the team added new growth and marketing efforts and team members. Marinade operated in profit at $115,402 on the month (-42% MoM). Total Operational Treasury value grew 2% to $2,353,782. View the operational wallet here.

Marketing Budget Update

Marinade passed a 6M MNDE marketing budget in 2022. Here’s an update on how that money has been spent so far and how much is left. About 500,000 MNDE was spent on individual liquidity mining and incentives with DeFi and central exchange partners like OKX and Drift. Additional expenses were covered by a 1M swap of MNDE to USDC last year, which covered the commission of research reports with independent researchers and other institutional reports. Additionally, sponsorships (like with media partner Solana Floor) and social content and contests rounded out the remainder of the marketing expenses so far.

3,656,984 MNDE remains in the original marketing budget, and Marinade has already earmarked some of these funds for upcoming campaigns, including the upcoming sponsorship of the StakePoint conference at Breakpoint. Solana projects are always welcome to post on the forum to share ideas for marketing and grants.

Community and partnerships update

Get ready for StakePoint! Marinade is hosting a Solana Breakpoint pre-conference on September 19th in Singapore. Interested in attending, speaking, or co-sponsoring? Check out the details in the event RSVP and get in touch with a Chef to discuss how to participate.

Marinade In the News

Solana Floor: Marinade teases v2 staking at Solana Crossroads. Read

Lightspeed: Marinade’s Brandon Tucker quoted in the Blockworks Lightspeed newsletter regarding the Solana sentiment at Consensus. Read

Coingape: Marinade is among the best places to stake Solana. Read

Milk Road Pro: The Rise of Liquid Staking on Solana. Read

Crypto Potato: Top Solana projects to watch include Marinade. Read