What Is Marinade Finance?
Marinade Finance is a non-custodial liquid staking protocol exclusive to the Solana blockchain network. It allows users to stake their SOL tokens and receive a liquid derivative called mSOL.
Background
Marco Broeken and Lucio Tato founded Marinade Finance in 2021.
How It Works
Marinade Finance is designed to optimize SOL staking rewards using an automated strategy that monitors all Solana validators and delegates to over 100 best-performing ones. It contributes to the Solana network’s decentralization and performance; in return, stakeholders receive rewards in SOL for each epoch.
Users can choose between staking natively or liquid staking their SOL for mSOL. The latter utilizes a smart contract that provides the staker with mSOL tokens, which can be used as collateral throughout Solana DeFi. The SOL staked with Marinade is spread among more than 100 validators, contributing to the security of the Solana blockchain. On the other hand, native staking doesn’t interact with the liquid staking smart contract, and SOL staking rewards are compounded into the stake account for each epoch.
Key Takeaways
- Marinade Finance is a non-custodial liquid staking protocol for the Solana network, allowing users to stake SOL tokens and receive a liquid derivative, mSOL.
- It was founded by Marco Broeken and Lucio Tato in 2021.
- The protocol uses an automated strategy to optimize SOL staking rewards, delegating to over 100 top-performing Solana validators.
- Users can choose between native staking or liquid staking. The latter provides mSOL tokens, which can be used as collateral in the Solana DeFi ecosystem.
- Marinade Finance contributes to Solana’s decentralization and performance and rewards stakers in SOL each epoch.