Marinade Kitchen Stories

Hello Chefs, it’s time for another recap of all the things that happened in November at Marinade following the trip to Amsterdam for Breakpoint. We think you’ll like this update. It’s been a remarkable month that saw a 10% increase in TVL, and kept growing and growing into December.

In fact, just before publishing this report, Marinade crossed 10 million in SOL stake for the first time ever!

Treasury Report

Let’s start with the treasury report, because economic conditions have drastically changed in a month. In the previous Kitchen Stories, Marinade predicted profitability, and the core team is pleased to report that was the case in November. Marinade saw great gains in TVL for both its liquid and Native staking products, driving more and more value to stakers and the validators in the pool. Revenue was 1,848 mSOL ($110,555). In USDC terms, this was a 116% gain MoM. Team expenses were $80,411, down 23% MoM. This was paid out $70,946 USDC and 202,678 MNDE, taken from the milestones budget passed in November. After the expenses, Marinade was in profit for $39,609 in USDC for the month, or $30,144 when including the MNDE distributed. At the end of November the treasury value was $1.725 million.

View Marinade’s DeFi wallet on Sonar.watch and see the DAO treasury balance in Realms.

Final month of Marinade Earn Season 1

There is still time to earn MNDE in addition to your Marinade staking rewards. Marinade Earn Season 1 will end on January 1st, at which point those participating in the program by holding mSOL or staking with Marinade Native will get to claim MNDE. Marinade has seen a rise of over 2 million SOL in its TVL since the program began, and DeFi activity with liquid staking tokens keeps ramping up.

The minimum amount you will be able to claim is 1 MNDE and in January, you will claim locked MNDE that requires a 30-day unlock done on Realms governance. Visit the Earn page to stake or see how much MNDE you’ve accrued so far.

DAO update: Two proposals pass

Two votes were passed and executed in November by the Marinade DAO.

The first was a 2M MNDE allocation to the Marinade Council to cover expenses related to multiple security audits for the liquid staking smart contract upgrade that was completed in November.

Second was the next milestone budget of 46M MNDE to contributors and advisors for meeting the next milestone of 16M SOL staked with Marinade. This milestone payout, once reached, will vest over the next 12 months, similar to how the current milestone payout is being distributed.

Over 125M MNDE is currently locked in governance. Thanks to all the Chefs for participating in these votes.

DeFi Partnerships and Cookbook Updates

The end of November saw more key integrations of liquid staking tokens like mSOL in the ecosystem. SolSniper integrated SPL support for its NFT marketplace aggregator. This means you can now purchase NFTs with the SPL of your choice including mSOL.

Another popular new integration for mSOL is Single-Sided Liquidity for mSOL on GooseFX. This DeFi strategy enables mSOL holders to supply mSOL and earn fees and arbitrage profits managed by Goose without any risk of impermanent loss.

mSOL also became the first token added to SDX, a brand-new options exchange on Solana. You can view more about these strategies and many others in the updated Cookbook.

Keep in mind you can also view all these positions on Sonar.Watch, who also recently made great updates to their user interface to include displaying Marinade Native in one line.

A look ahead: Delegation Strategy update

This year the build team has been looking at ways to make the stake pool even more performant for 2024, and that can be achieved in numerous ways. One of them is updating the delegation strategy to ensure the best validators are receiving stake. Another however is the idea of “protected staking rewards.” This concept would allow stakers to have peace of mind in their performance of the stake pool, and validators can receive more stake by supplying performance protection SOL that could be used to supplement staking rewards.

Marinade has been collaborating with validators and advisors on this concept to make sure all parties benefit and is eager to share its vision very soon.

This is the last Kitchen Stories before 2024 but rest assured the Marinade team will be pushing hard to finish a truly memorable 2023 that is ending on a real high note. Thanks for all your support in reaching 10 million SOL stake and beyond!