No. With both Marinade Native and Marinade Select, your SOL always remains under your institution’s control. Marinade never takes custody of client assets — you retain withdrawal authority at all times. Native connects your stake to the highest-performing validators through the stake auction marketplace, while Select gives you the option to delegate only to KYB-verified, MEV-free validators.

Both Marinade Native and Marinade Select avoid the added smart contract layer required by liquid staking tokens, which reduces risk exposure and simplifies compliance. Native gives institutions full custody and direct delegation through Marinade’s stake auction marketplace, while Select goes a step further by limiting delegation to KYB-verified, MEV-free validators. For institutions that value security, transparency, and control, these options offer a safer alternative to tokenized staking.

Marinade’s Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM) selects validators based on strict criteria for performance and decentralization. This includes factors such as historical uptime, decentralization potential, and security practices to ensure validators meet Marinade’s quality standards.

For institutions using Marinade Select, there is an additional layer of diligence: validators must be KYB-verified and operate MEV-free. This gives institutions greater assurance that their stake is delegated only to trusted, compliant, and performance-proven validators.

The Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM) is a feature unique to Marinade’s staking protocol. Solana validators use this marketplace to bid on delegated SOL offered by token holders. Having a higher stake allows validators to earn more staking rewards, priority fees, and other operational benefits, so they compete for delegation by sharing part of that value with stakers. This helps stakers access more competitive rewards while keeping delegation distributed across the network.

For institutions, Marinade Select builds on SAM with an additional layer of assurance. Delegation is directed only to KYB-verified and MEV-free validators, so institutions benefit from the performance incentives of SAM while knowing their stake is placed with trusted and compliant operators.

Marinade Native provides Protected Staking Rewards (PSR), which safeguard stakers from losing rewards due to validator underperformance. By carefully selecting and monitoring validators, Marinade also minimizes slashing risks. PSR, together with the validator due diligence process, helps ensure that rewards are both competitive and protected against typical risks.

For institutions, Marinade Select offers the same protections as Native while adding an extra layer of assurance by delegating only to KYB-verified and MEV-free validators.

Marinade’s staking protocol includes PSR, or Protected Staking Rewards. This feature protects stakers against unexpected validator underperformance, such as commission changes or prolonged downtime. Validators that partner with Marinade sign an on-chain bond requiring them to cover 100% of rewards lost when uptime falls between 50% and 99%. Validators that raise their commission during an epoch are also required to cover the loss through their bond (known as commission rugging).

Both Marinade Native and Marinade Select use PSR, so institutions benefit from the same protection whether they are delegating broadly through the stake auction marketplace or only to KYB-verified, MEV-free validators.

Marinade does not charge users a management fee for any of its products. Marinade Native, Marinade Select, and Marinade Liquid all operate without entry or exit fees. Instead, validators pay a small percentage of the staking rewards they earn by using Marinade’s platform to access available SOL.

Marinade offers staking solutions designed for institutions, combining security, compliance, and competitive rewards. With Native staking, institutions maintain full custody of their SOL with no smart contract risk, and unlike many other providers, Marinade does not charge commissions on staking or MEV rewards.

For those looking for added governance and reduced risk, Marinade Select delegates only to KYB-verified, MEV-free validators while still benefiting from Protected Staking Rewards (PSR).

Both Native and Select also leverage Marinade’s stake auction marketplace, where validators bid for SOL delegation, allowing institutions to capture additional rewards while ensuring high validator performance and decentralization.

Marinade works with a growing network of licensed and regulated institutions worldwide that have integrated Solana staking into their products and services. Custodians including BitGo, Zodia Custody, and Copper have built direct integrations, allowing their clients to stake SOL through Marinade while maintaining custody. Asset managers such as Bitwise use Marinade as the staking provider for their Solana ETP (ticker: BSOL), and Marinade has also been named in ETF filings by Canary Capital, where Marinade was cited directly as the staking infrastructure partner.

Through Reown (formerly WalletConnect), institutions like Fireblocks and Anchorage can also connect directly to Marinade, making it easier for their clients to access Solana staking. More recently, large treasury managers such as VisionSys have committed to staking their Solana holdings with Marinade, further demonstrating institutional adoption at scale.

Solana wallets separate permissions for staking into two controls: “withdraw authority” (which allows funds to be withdrawn) and “stake authority” (which delegates tokens to a validator). With Marinade Native, the institution always keeps withdraw authority, so the SOL never leaves custody. Marinade’s software only uses the staking authority to delegate to top-performing validators.

This setup means Marinade never has access to the SOL being staked, and funds remain under the institution’s control at all times. Institutions using Marinade Select also benefit from the same structure while delegating specifically to verified validators.

To learn more about Solana’s design, you can read the official documentation here.

Marinade’s protocol includes the Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM), where validators bid for delegated SOL. Since a higher stake improves a validator’s rewards and priority fees, they share part of that value back with the stakers. This mechanism allows Marinade users to capture additional yield that other staking setups do not provide.

In addition, Marinade continuously monitors and rebalances delegations so SOL is always staked with the top-performing validators. The combination of SAM and this optimized delegation strategy helps ensure that institutions using Marinade can access some of the most competitive staking rewards available.

When staking with Marinade, your institution always retains withdrawal authority over its SOL. This safeguard is built into Solana itself, not Marinade, which means your funds remain under your control even in the unlikely event of a catastrophic issue affecting the platform. In a worst-case scenario, you can reclaim your SOL directly through the Solana client without relying on Marinade. For more detail, see “How does Marinade offer zero smart contract risk?” or review Solana’s documentation here.

Yes. Marinade is built to manage millions of SOL without added operational complexity. Institutions such as funds, custodians, and exchanges can delegate large portfolios while maintaining full custody and control over their assets. The protocol’s delegation strategy and auction marketplace are specifically designed to scale, ensuring that even very large stakes are distributed across top-performing validators for both yield optimization and network decentralization.

Marinade is developed by Marinade Labs, a web3 software company that launched the protocol in 2021. Marinade was the first to introduce liquid staking on Solana and has since expanded into Native staking and Select, giving institutions a range of compliant, high-performance options for SOL delegation. Today, the platform secures billions in liquidity for the Solana network. Marinade Labs is headquartered in New York with offices in the European Union, including Prague.