When staking through Marinade Native, your SOL remains under your institution’s or customer’s control at all times. Marinade Native does not take custody of the SOL being staked at any point, but by using Marinade Native, your institution is connected with the highest performing validators to stake your Solana at the most competitive staking rewards rate.

Marinade Native provides direct staking without involving the additional smart contracts required by liquid staking token setups. This minimizes risk exposure — crucial for institutions requiring high levels of security and reliability – and simplifies compliance and risk management. Native staking is an appealing alternative for institutions that value stability.

Marinade’s Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM) selects validators based on stringent performance and decentralization criteria. The due diligence includes metrics such as historical performance, decentralization potential, and security practices. This careful vetting ensures that all validators meet Marinade’s quality standards, enhancing security and maintaining high staking yield.

Marinade’s staking protocol comes embedded with a Staking Auction Marketplace (SAM), which is unique to Marinade. Solana validators use this marketplace to bid on the delegated SOL offered by token holders, as having a higher stake earns the validator more staking rewards, priority fees, and other operational benefits.

Marinade Native provides Protected Staking Rewards (PSR), which safeguards stakers from losing rewards due to validator underperformance. Additionally, by carefully selecting and monitoring validators, Marinade minimizes slashing risks. Marinade’s PSR, paired with the validator due diligence process, work together to ensure that rewards are both competitive and protected against typical risks.

Marinade’s staking protocol is embedded with PSR, or protected staking rewards. This feature is a form of protection for Marinade stakers, as it reimburses stakers for any unexpected underperformance of a validator in the stake pool (such as through commission changes or prolonged downtime). Validators that partner with Marinade sign onto an on-chain bond with Marinade This is done through an on-chain bond created by Marinade and each validator in the pool and requires validators to cover 100% of the rewards lost when their uptime falls between 50% and 99%. Additionally, any validator who raises their commission in an epoch will cover the loss through their bond (also known as commission rugging).

Marinade does not charge users a management fee for any of its products. Marinade Native and Marinade Liquid charge validators a small percentage of the staking rewards they earn by using Marinade’s platform to access available SOL.

Marinade Native is better designed for institutions.
First, Marinade Native does not charge users a commission on the staking or MEV rewards earned. Other Solana staking providers and validators charge commissions directly on these rewards.
Second, Marinade has embedded protected staking rewards, or PSR, within its technology, which protects stakers from unexpected underperformance of validators through commission changes or downtime.
Third, validators bid for SOL in Marinade’s stake auction marketplace. Marinade passes this revenue to the staker in the form of additional rewards.

Marinade’s staking protocol has an auction marketplace embedded within it called the Staking Auction Marketplace, or SAM. Solana validators use this marketplace to bid on the deposits of SOL offered by token holders, as having a higher stake earns them more staking rewards and priority fees. By doing so, they effectively revenue-share their proceeds from running a validator node with the holders of the SOL tokens used in their staking.
Further, we built an optimized delegation strategy to ensure your SOL is staked with the top-performing validators at all times. Your staking position is automatically monitored and rebalanced with the most optimal options, at no cost to you. This service, combined with the additional yield pledged by the validator, is what secures Marinade’s staking rewards rate.

Yes, Marinade is designed to manage millions of SOL without operational complexity, making it suitable for funds, custodians, and exchanges handling large portfolios.

Marinade Labs is a web3 software development company that created the Marinade protocol in 2021. We were first to bring liquid staking to the network; today, our sophisticated, high-performance staking delegation platform brings billions in liquidity and security to the SOL market, including through Marinade Native. We are headquartered in New York, with offices in the European Union, including Prague.