Before we get started, this is not a recommendation or endorsement to buy any token(s) mentioned.
Given this week’s bullish price action, Solana’s SOL is earning lots of attention once again among DeFi investors. Although there are countless ways to earn SOL with DeFi lending, liquidity provisions, and perps trading, the easiest passive strategy remains staking. Solana’s blockchain consensus uses Proof of Stake, and like Ethereum, SOL holders can simply stake their SOL to get paid more for contributing to the network’s security.
Live for over two years, the top liquid staking protocol on Solana is Marinade Finance, with just over $260M in total SOL. With over 75,000 wallets holding mSOL, integrations with dozens of DeFi protocols, and traded on central exchanges like Coinbase, Marinade has attracted just over 3% of all SOL stake made liquid so far. When liquid staking SOL for mSOL, the price of mSOL goes up relative to SOL each epoch with Solana inflation rewards being accrued into the underlying staked SOL in the Marinade stake pool. The most obvious convenience to mSOL is the ability to still use liquid staked token representing SOL while passively earning SOL staking rewards.
However, Marinade is no longer just liquid staking. SOL holders can now use an automated staking strategy expertly designed by the Marinade core team and Marinade community.
Marinade stakers can stake natively or liquid stake to the same pool of 100+ high-performing Solana validators. When native staking with Marinade, there is no smart contract interaction, while when liquid staking you receive an equivalent value of mSOL that can be used in DeFi applications. Marinade’s native staking option means stakers don’t have a liquid token to use in DeFi but in exchange, they’re earning even more SOL staking rewards–currently 8.38% APY vs 7.89% APY with mSOL. Both staking options include a relatively small MNDE reward to boost yield.
Today, I’ll show how I can get started with native staking on Marinade Finance to earn 8.38% APY with my SOL.
How to Earn Up to 8.38% APY with Marinade SOL Native Staking
Before we get started, please be aware of these risks.
- Smart contract risk in Marinade (if using mSOL)
- Front-end spoof attack on app app frontend
- An economic design exploit in the design of Marinade Finance
- Pegged tokens like mSOL can depeg
- Colluding signers on any multisig given the stake authority that Marinade uses a PDA of a Solana program, the contract allows a Marinade bot to call delegation instructions on behalf of this PDA, and Marinade’s multisig (4/7) can revoke the access of the bot and create a new one if needed.
Here’s how I get started!
- First, I go to the Marinade Finance app and connect my Solana wallet such as Phantom.
- Then, I choose Native staking, click Stake SOL, opt for Delegation = Automated and Staking = Native, specify how much SOL to deposit, and click Stake SOL.
That’s it! Now I’m earning the highest available staking reward for SOL thanks to Marinade’s native staking solution.
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DeFi Dad is one of the earliest power users of DeFi, having worked with early Ethereum startups going back to 2018, including Zapper.
