Protected Staking Rewards - Rollout details
Read more about the next steps for Protected Staking Rewards
Marinade is rolling out Protected Staking Rewards in Q1 of 2024. This is a first-of-its-kind program for Solana, designed to deliver the very best staking rewards performance to Marinade stakers. PSR will also enable Marinade to expand its algorithmic delegation strategy beyond the current max of 100 validators by ensuring all of them in the set meet the expected performance threshold.
As a reminder, Protected Staking Rewards will ensure that validators receiving Marinade stake cover any significant downtime or commission change, making staking rewards predictable. This will allow any Solana staker to benefit from institutional-grade Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that are usually reserved for institutional stakers. (Read more here: https://marinade.finance/blog/introducing-protected-staking-rewards/)
For validators to be eligible for Marinade stake once PSR is live, they will need to be onboarded to Protected Staking Rewards and supply a SOL bond.
Here are the steps and timeline currently planned for the rollout of Marinade’s PSR, followed by additional details for validators:
Timeline for Protected Staking Rewards
Today:
Validators can already create their bond, without the need to fund it. Marinade invites all validators to get familiar with bonds and create one for their validator already. (More instructions below)
Mid-February:
Initiating a bond for your validator will become a requirement to receive Marinade stake. Please note that at this time, the bond does not need to be funded yet, but will need to exist. This period will be used to test the system, conduct audits, and gather feedback from validators. A reporting channel will be set up so validators can view the results and provide feedback.
Beginning of Q2:
Protected Staking Rewards will be fully activated, opening the possibility for Marinade to withdraw SOL from the bonds when it is required.
In the current plans, a validator would need to supply a 50 SOL bond to receive up to 50,000 SOL stake from Marinade. (Example: a 200 SOL bond supplied would make the validator eligible to receive up to 200k SOL of Marinade’s stake). When the redelegate instruction is live on Solana, this amount can be reduced by about half (1 epoch of rewards instead of 2).
Please note that Marinade stake will still be distributed according to the Delegation Strategy and Directed Stake. PSR will just become an additional requirement for validators to be able to receive that stake.
How bond claims work for PSR
If a validator suffers unexpected performance issues while receiving Marinade stake, a portion of their bond will be taken by Marinade to cover the loss of rewards. Here’s how it works:
Marinade will produce publicly available bond reports that can be reviewed by the community and validators themselves.
Validators: How to set up a bond to Marinade for PSR
To set up your bond, you’ll need to:
Bonds will take the form of a stake account delegated to your validator, where the withdrawal authority is delegated to a specified Marinade address. Funding your bond will not be required at the moment and more information will be available before it becomes an eligibility criteria for the Delegation Strategy.
Please also note that Marinade’s Delegation Strategy is currently being reviewed and, pending discussion on the forum and a DAO vote, will see some changes during this timeline.
Marinade Earn Season 2 and PSR
Season 2 of Marinade Earn has earmarked validators who onboard on time to PSR to be eligible for special bonuses. Validators, be sure to be onboarded and supply your bond to confirm eligibility.
Get in touch
Validators can bring their questions about PSR and the setup process to the #validators channel in Marinade’s discord. Visit Discord here: https://discord.com/invite/QU3acbjFem
