Stronger Bond Signals and a New Risk Fee in SAM

The Marinade Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM) is introducing a newclass of charge — the Bond Risk Fee — and at the same timerefining how validator bond coverage is measured. The fee protectsstakers when a validator's bond becomes too small for the stake itholds. The refinements make the underlying check fairer and thehealth signal easier to read.

Here's what's new, why it matters, and how to stay ahead of it.

New to SAM? Start with the Stake Auction Marketplace docs for the basics, or the Dynamic Commission announcement for a narrative walkthrough.

The new piece: the Bond Risk Fee

The Bond Risk Fee is risk compensation, not a penalty for badbehaviour. When a validator's claimable bond drops below theminimum coverage for their current Marinade stake, Marinade partiallyundelegates the stake and charges a fee from the bond. The fee isdistributed to stakers to compensate them for the cost of theredelegation.

When it triggers. The check runs once per epoch. If the bonddoesn't cover at least 5 epochs of expected revenue on the currentMarinade stake, the fee triggers for that epoch.

What happens. Enough stake is undelegated so that the remainingbond comfortably covers the remaining stake for 13 epochs. A feeproportional to the undelegated amount is charged from the bond. Ifthe leftover position would be too small to be worth bonding at all,the full stake is undelegated instead.

Full mechanics, formula, and a worked example:Bond Risk Reduction Mechanism.

Four refinements to bond coverage measurement

Alongside the fee, the check it relies on has been tightened so itmeasures what actually matters.

1. Unprotected stake is excluded. Only the portion of yourMarinade stake that needs bond backing is compared against the bond.Validators carrying a meaningful unprotected share previously lookedworse than they were. The check now tracks your real exposure — awelcome correction if unprotected stake is part of your setup.

2. Pending-withdrawal bond no longer counts. Only the claimableportion of your bond supports coverage. Bond queued for withdrawalstops helping you pass the check from the moment you request it —not when the lockup ends. One less moving part to reason about, andthe signal you see is always the honest one.

3. The health indicator has a meaningful zero. ThebondGoodForNEpochs value is now centred so that zero is the feeline: positive means headroom, negative means a fee is due thisepoch. No lookup against a config threshold needed. That turns yourbond's status into a one-second read.

4. The health indicator can go truly negative. Previously clippedat zero, the indicator now shows the depth of the gap when avalidator is under-covered. Dashboards and notifications candistinguish "slightly under" from "seriously under". So when an alertfires, the magnitude tells you how fast to react.

How to stay ahead of the fee

Being charged is avoidable. Three practical steps:

1. Subscribe to Bond Notifications. Notifications are opt-in —run the validator-bonds CLI once per bond to enable Telegram oremail delivery:

validator-bonds subscribe <vote-account> --type telegram \\\\
 --address <handle> --authority <keypair>


You'll get a warning as your coverage shrinks toward the fee line(around 10 epochs remaining), a critical alert when you're within acouple of epochs of it, and a penalty_expected alert in any epochthe auction simulation predicts you'll be charged — all before theon-chain settlement, so there is still time to top up. See theBond Notifications docs.

2. Watch the PSR Dashboard. The coverage column is colour-coded:green above 13 epochs (bond not limiting), yellow/orange between 2and 12 (top up to increase capacity or to avoid the fee), red at 1or below (at risk this epoch). Live atpsr.marinade.finance.

3. Top up in time. The check runs at the start of each epoch, soif the dashboard or a notification shows coverage drifting down, topup before the next epoch. TheValidator Bonds CLIcommands fund-bond-sol and fund-bond add collateral from a walletor an existing stake account.

Net effect

The auction itself doesn't move — stake allocation, winning price,and who receives delegation are unchanged. What changed is thebond-risk layer on top:

• Fair: the check no longer penalises validators for stake thatdoesn't need bond backing, and no longer gives credit for bond onits way out.
• Readable: the health signal's sign tells you your status andits magnitude tells you severity — no configuration knowledgerequired.
• Enforceable: when the bond isn't sized for the job, there isnow a concrete fee, not just a warning.

Validators who maintain the recommended 13 epochs of coverage willnever see the fee. Those who set up notifications will see warningslong before the fee would trigger. Only unmonitored drift leads to acharge.

Full mechanics and configuration reference:Bond Risk Reduction Mechanism.

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