Marinade Kitchen Stories

Latest updates from the Marinade DAO.

What a difference a month makes. When Marinade posted its last Kitchen Stories in early October, there was quite a bit of activity bubbling beneath the surface. By the time the Solana ecosystem convened in Amsterdam for Breakpoint, things had gone full boil. Huge announcements from teams at Jupiter and Pyth, integrations of Solana DEX’s from heavyweight teams like Swissborg, as well as the announcement that Firedancer is officially on testnet, had the campus buzzing.

The amount of excitement and activity on Solana has reached levels not seen in two years and new users are coming to the chain to discover improved chain performance and better dApps to use thanks to all the teams building deep in the bear throughout the year.

Interest in staking has picked up and so have trading volumes for both mSOL and MNDE. There is so much to recap in an epic month. Let’s get to it:

Solana Breakpoint and Block Zero conferences

Marinade gathered IRL in Amsterdam for the MEV Camp and Block Zero conference, followed by four days at the main Breakpoint conference. Marinade was a co-sponsor of Block Zero and held a workshop about decentralization goals for Solana. The workshop had many validators in attendance and together debated the most pressing items surrounding decentralization heading into 2024.

The main takeaway for Marinade from Block Zero is that it’s a good time to revisit the stake pool’s delegation strategy to ensure as many Solana validators are sustainable as possible. If you recall, not long after the FTX crash, the decision was made to reduce the pool of validators who receive stake from 400+ to 100. Now, with Marinade stake having grown to record levels over 9 million, as well as the price of SOL reaching pre-FTX levels once again, not to mention the overall performance of validators is even better, this is a great time. Discussions are happening about how the delegation strategy is revamped in the #validators channel on Discord

Marinade presents on Solana Breakpoint mainstage

Breakpoint was full of great panels and workshops on multiple stages and Marinade had the opportunity to join a panel on liquid staking on the main stage. Marinade’s Michael Repetny was joined by Swissborg’s CTO Nicolas Remond and Solana validator Michael Hubbard (Laine validator) to discuss the outlook for LSTs on Solana. The discussion was recorded and can be viewed on Solana’s YouTube page:

Meanwhile, there was also a developer stage and the Marinade Devs were busy learning about all the latest network updates there. Here is Chef Chalda with a thread on technical takeaways from Breakpoint:

Treasury Report and Milestones

October was a strong month for Marinade which saw TVL in mSOL terms up 9.59% and revenues of 1,732 mSOL up 1.37% MoM. Revenue in USDC terms was up 35% to $51,094. Operational expenses were $105,038. The payments were made in $50,877 USDC and 1.273M MNDE taken out of the contributor milestones budget.

The Total Treasury Value of Marinade is now up 34% MoM and stands at $805,930.

In October, Marinade hit its first TVL milestone of 8M SOL. This unlocks contributor MNDE that will vest over a 12-month time period beginning on November 23. As a reminder, as voted on by the DAO, the team does not receive time-based unlocks, only milestone unlocks. You can view all unlocking activity by visiting Marinade’s Realms Governance page.

With the growth of stake to Marinade and the rise of SOL market price in November combined with recent adjustments to the contributors’ structure, Marinade expects operations to be in a cash-flow positive position at the end of November.

Front-end access blocked to UK IP addresses

Due to regulatory concerns surrounding a new law in the United Kingdom regarding Crypto Assets, many Solana protocols including Marinade made the decision to block their front end to UK IP addresses.

If you are a UK user who was affected, there are several options. mSOL cannot be frozen by Marinade. It can be swapped on the market on any available DEX for very low fees. Marinade also makes its SDK available for anyone in its Github repo, and many of its functions have been picked up by others in the ecosystem like Solana Hub. If you have any questions you can join Discord to ask a Chef about your options.

Smart Contract Upgrade Update

As shared in the announcement article in October, Marinade has worked this fall on completing an upgrade to its liquid staking contract. Work was completed, audited, and is in the process of being signed by the ecosystem 6/13 multisig. The upgrade, which was audited by leading auditors on Solana Neodyme and Sec3, includes performance and security benefits as well as an update to its Anchor version that makes Marinade even easier for teams to integrate into their protocols.

You can visit the Changelog for details on the completion of the update and a link to the Github Repo to view the code.

Validators introducing unique incentives to mSOL-MNDE holders

Marinade introduced Directed Stake in early 2023, and with the addition of Snapshots, which enable mSOL to be tracked in various DeFi protocols, it means that validators can provide unique incentives to MNDE and mSOL holders who vote for them. Initial validators to introduce these incentives included Solana Compass and Lucky Stake.

The latest validator to do so is Solana Hub (formerly Avaulto). Solana Hub built a loyalty league for mSOL and MNDE holders that rewards them with points that translate to additional SOL rewards distributed weekly.

The effort is paying off. Over the past month, Solana Hub’s stake has nearly doubled to 530,000 SOL. Directed Stake currently controls over 3.5 million SOL from Marinade, and the mSOL directed stake ratio is currently 2 SOL per each one directed by a staker. | View the Validator Dashboard

Projects that have tokens, NFTs, or other incentives can provide additional loyalty incentives to those who stake with them through Marinade. And unlike native staking, the user can stay liquid for DeFi. Check out what Chef btuck had to say about the possibilities of boosted staking rewards from Marinade. Who will be next?