Research
Protocol Overview
Liquid Staking

Understanding Marinade: A Comprehensive Overview

Mar 20, 2024 ⋅  22 min read

Key Insights

  • Marinade Finance is an automated staking protocol on Solana that provides liquid and native staking solutions.
  • Marinade has over $1.8 billion in TVL. At $1.2 billion, Marinade Liquid recently lost its place as Solana’s top liquid staking protocol to Jito. However, Marinade Native quickly grew to $630 million TVL in 6 months.
  • Notable upcoming upgrades include Protected Staking Rewards and a delegation strategy update. Together, they will allow Marinade to expand the number of validators it delegates to without sacrificing performance by covering staking reward losses.
  • An ongoing Marinade Earn campaign rewards Marinade stakers and delegation governors with Marinade’s native token MNDE.

Delegated Proof-of-Stake has drawn criticism for potentially leading to a more centralized validator set. As stakers are incentivized to delegate to high-performing and “safer” validators, stake may begin concentrating at the top.

Marinade Finance is an automated staking protocol on Solana, offering liquid and native staking solutions. By delegating stake to over 100 top-performing validators, Marinade aids in decentralizing the Solana validator set without harming staker APY. Between its liquid and native products, Marinade has over $1.8 billion in TVL. Marinade plans to delegate to even more validators once it introduces Protected Staking Rewards and the upcoming delegation strategy update, all while preserving its APY.

Background

Marinade was founded during the March 2021 Solana x Serum Hackathon, winning the 3rd place prize of around $80,000. After the hackathon, the Marinade team connected with Lucio Tato and Marco Broeken, who also submitted a liquid staking solution for the same hackathon. The two teams ultimately decided to work together under the Marinade brand.

After a devnet launch on Solana in May 2021, Marinade launched on mainnet on August 2, 2021. A few months later, Marinade’s governance token MNDE was released, with a retroactive airdrop for holders of Marinade SOL (mSOL). In April 2022, Marinade’s onchain governance launched, which later migrated to governance platform Realms in July 2023.

Marinade has not raised any venture capital funding or conducted any public token sales. Instead, Marinade’s native token MNDE has mainly been distributed via various campaigns to reward users and contributors, detailed in the Tokenomics section below.

Marinade’s liquid staking protocol has undergone several updates since its launch, including new delegation strategies and Protected Staking Rewards. Marinade launched a native staking product, Marinade Native, in July 2023 to counterpart its liquid staking solution.

Technology

Marinade Liquid

Marinade’s original product is its liquid staking protocol. The protocol enables users to deposit SOL and receive a token receipt as mSOL. The deposited SOL is staked to validators according to Marinade’s Delegation Strategy, described below. As staking rewards accrue to the underlying staked SOL pools, mSOL appreciates relative to SOL over time.

Compared to native staking on Solana, liquid staking offers several advantages, including:

  • No Opportunity Cost: SOL holders can opt out of dilution from inflation (currently 5.4% annualized inflation) while still partaking in other opportunities, such as DeFi.
  • No Unbonding Period: Natively staked tokens cannot be withdrawn until the epoch's end (every 2-3 days). Liquid stakers, however, can immediately swap from mSOL to SOL, assuming enough liquidity.
  • Stake Distribution and Management: When staking natively, it might be cumbersome to distribute stake across many validators. Furthermore, the average staker does not have the tools to monitor validators and automatically re-delegate in case of commission rugs, validator downtimes, or other performance issues. Marinade Liquid does all of this for stakers, aiding in both the decentralization of Solana’s validator network and the return to stakers.
  • Potential Tax Benefits: Depending on the tax jurisdiction, liquid staking can present the advantage of its rewards being taxed as capital gains rather than income.

While liquid staking introduces several benefits, it also brings some smart contract risk. Users must place some trust in the contract that stores deposited SOL and mints mSOL. If it has a vulnerability, a malicious actor could steal the SOL or mint mSOL out of thin air. To that end, Marinade’s smart contracts were audited in 2021 by Kudelski Security and Ackee Blockchain, with audits on upgraded contracts in 2023 by Neodyme and Sec3.

The primary fee involved in Marinade Liquid is a 6% fee on rewards. Based on a 7% APY, this translates to around a 0.42% fee on staked SOL. There is no deposit fee or unstake fee if a user waits for the epoch to end. If a user wants to instantly unstake, the fee ranges from 0.1% to 9% based on a formula that tracks the liquidity in a protocol-owned mSOL/SOL pool. Half of the fees go to the liquidity providers, and the other half go to Marinade’s treasury. On Marinade’s UI, the DEX aggregator Jupiter is used for instant unstaking, which sources liquidity from Marinade’s protocol-owned pool and mSOL/SOL pools in various third-party DeFi protocols.

The liquidity pool at its steady state is designed to contain 100% SOL (liquidity providers can only deposit SOL, not mSOL). If mSOL is deposited via an instant unstake order, the Marinade protocol rebalances the pool back to 100% SOL by using that mSOL as the next mSOL provided for a stake operation. The new staker’s SOL would then go to the liquidity pool at no cost to the user. Besides instant unstake orders, the liquidity pool is used for mSOL liquidations and to match staking and unstaking orders.

Marinade Native

In July 2023, Marinade introduced Marinade Native, a native staking product in conjunction with its liquid staking product. Marinade Native stakes SOL to Solana validators using the same delegations strategy as Marinade Liquid, described below.

Rather than receiving mSOL, Marinade Native stakers receive SOL rewards sent to their stake accounts every epoch. Furthermore, Marinade Native stakers retain custody of their SOL and are not introduced to any smart contract risk. Under Solana’s stake account structure, every account has a stake authority and a withdraw authority. Marinade Native receives stake authority but has no access to withdraw authority. Users can revoke Marinade Native’s stake authority access at any time.

Marinade Native has no management fee, unlike the 6% Marinade Liquid fee on rewards. Like Marinade Liquid, Marinade Native does not have a fee on deposits; however, it does have a fixed 0.001 SOL fee on all withdrawals.

Marinade Native introduces the same “Stake Distribution and Management” benefit as Marinade Liquid. It allows stakers to easily distribute their stake across top-performing validators while enjoying virtually the same qualities as native staking.

Delegation Strategy

SOL deposited in Marinade Liquid and Native are staked to validators based on the following criteria:

  • 60% – Marinade’s Algorithmic Delegation Strategy
    • Marinade considers all active validators every epoch and gives scores to eligible ones.
      • Eligible validators have at least 10 epochs of data (roughly a month), a maximum of 10% commission in the past 10 epochs, and a minimum stake of at least 1,000 SOL.
      • Eligible validators are then scored based on their commission-adjusted APY, percentage of blocks produced out of leader slots assigned, and decentralization based on data centers.
    • Marinade’s stake is then distributed to the top 100 validators based on their scores. This operation is managed by a set of permissionless bots (anyone can run them).
    • Validators can also get blacklisted if they display vote lagging, commission rugs (e.g., raising commission to 100%), or twice fail to restart their node in 36 hours following a cluster restart after a blockchain halt. Blacklisted validators can appeal or demonstrate reformed behavior and be removed, but repeat offenders or one-time commission rug offenders are permanently blacklisted.
  • 20% – MNDE Directed Stake
    • MNDE stakers can vote on validators, with 20% of Marinade TVL staked to validators proportionally based on the votes.
    • Validator eligibility rules are the same as the Marinade delegation strategy except
      • The minimum stake is 100 instead of 1,000 SOL
      • Instead of being in the top 100 scores, the validator’s score must be at least 90% of the lowest-scored validator picked by the delegation strategy.
    • Votes for a single validator are capped at 10% of total votes. If a validator receives more than 10% of the total votes, the overflow votes are distributed to other validators proportionally based on their votes or to validators picked by the delegation strategy if fewer than 10 eligible validators are voted for.
  • 20% – mSOL Directed Stake
    • mSOL holders can vote on validators, with 20% of Marinade TVL staked to validators proportionally based on the votes. Users can vote with mSOL even if it’s deposited in select DeFi protocols.
    • Validator eligibility rules are the same as the Marinade delegation strategy except
      • There are no minimum stake requirements
      • Instead of being in the top 100 scores, the validator’s score must be at least 80% of the lowest-scored validator picked by the delegation strategy.

The above delegation strategy has been in effect since the March 2023 delegation strategy update. Another update is in the works, which was recently approved via governance. Notable changes include:

  • In addition to the hosting data center, decentralization scores will include overall stake distribution, hosting country, and hosting city. Accounting for overall stake distribution will improve Solana’s Nakamoto coefficient by delegating more stake to smaller validators.
  • As Marinade’s TVL grows, the number of validators receiving stake via the algorithmic delegation strategy can increase above 100.
  • MNDE and mSOL holders can allocate votes toward the algorithmic stake instead of only specific validators.
  • The maximum commission for eligible validators will be reduced from 10% to 8%.

Protected Staking Rewards

In mid-February 2024, Marinade began the launch of Protected Staking Rewards (PSR). PSR enforces an onchain service-level agreement protecting stakers from reduced rewards for reasons such as validator performance issues or commission rugs. PSR requires validators to put up a bond to be eligible for Marinade stake. The required bond amount will equal 1 SOL for every 10,000 SOL received from Marinade delegation. The Marinade DAO will also commit 4 SOL for every 10,000 SOL delegated. Validator bonds will cover initial losses, with Marinade’s bond covering extended losses. As such, PSR allows Marinade to stake to more validators without sacrificing APY to stakers.

By February 15, validators needed to set up their bond to be eligible for stake, although the bond did not yet need to be funded. Over 330 validators have set up their bond so far. Neodyme is currently auditing the validator bonds contract. Once the audit is completed, Marinade will implement the governance proposal that was recently passed to formally integrate PSR.

Tokenomics

Overview

Marinade’s token MNDE is used for governance and growth initiatives. MNDE currently has a capped supply of 1 billion tokens. Around 17.9% of the total supply has been allocated to the team, with the rest going to the DAO. The DAO has allocated tokens toward various initiatives, with around 63% of the total supply still unallocated. At a circulating supply of 257 million, MNDE’s market cap currently stands at over $65 million.

Initial Distribution

MNDE launched in November 2021 with a capped supply of 1 billion tokens. Of those tokens, 35% were allocated to the community, 35% to the DAO, and 30% to the Marinade team.

Team Token Allocation Changes

After a six-month lockup, the team’s tokens began vesting linearly in April 2022. The linear vesting was extended from 2 to 4 years in August 2022. In February 2023, the team announced it would be reallocating 225 million MNDE to the DAO (22.5% of the total supply), reducing its allocation to 75 million tokens, 63 million of which had already been unlocked. The remaining 12 million tokens finished vesting in January 2024.

At the same time, the team announced that subject to governance, 138 million MNDE would be allocated to the team from the DAO. Instead of purely time-based unlocks, this distribution incorporates performance-based elements. At each milestone, 46 million MNDE would be allocated when TVL reaches 8 million, 16 million, and 32 million SOL. For each milestone, the team could request up to 2 million MNDE monthly to cover any operation expenses that outweighed protocol revenue. If the TVL milestones are hit, the rest of the budget will be unlocked with a 12-month vesting schedule.

In October 2023, Marinade reached the 8 million SOL TVL milestone. Of the 46 million MNDE allocated for this milestone, over 37 million MNDE remained in the operational budget, initiating a 12-month monthly vesting period. Subsequently, another 46 million MNDE was earmarked in anticipation of reaching the next milestone of 16 million SOL TVL.

Additionally, around 11.6 million MNDE was distributed from the DAO for initial contributor grants.

Growth Initiatives

Tokens not distributed to the team have been distributed by various initiatives:

Retroactive Rewards (Token Launch): Distributed 20 million MNDE as a retroactive airdrop.

At launch, 20 million tokens (2% of the total supply) were airdropped as retroactive rewards to mSOL holders, LPs in the Marinade mSOL/SOL pool and other ecosystem integrations, and devnet participants.

Liquidity Mining Rewards (Token Launch - July 2023): Distributed over 78 million MNDE as liquidity rewards in mSOL DeFi pools.

At launch, 350 million MNDE (35% of total supply) was allocated toward liquidity mining at a target rate of around 1.7 million MNDE per week. An additional 80 million MNDE would be allocated as liquidity mining bonuses if several Marinade TVL milestones were reached (starting at 3 million SOL and reaching 100 million SOL).

Originally, the Marinade team decided what liquidity pools were incentivized and with how much MNDE. In July 2022, a proposal was passed to hand over this decision-making to MNDE holders via governance. Through liquidity gauges on governance platform Tribeca, MNDE holders could vote on which protocols to allocate liquidity mining rewards. Additionally, the proposal implemented a weekly distribution cap of 1 million MNDE.

Throughout 2022, discussions about the liquidity mining program often concluded that it was not effectively incentivizing the sticky growth of mSOL TVL in DeFi protocols. This conclusion was reinforced by the fact that Marinade’s TVL was largely flat from Q4’21 until the FTX collapse in Q4’22. After the FTX collapse, DeFi activity on Solana reduced even more.

Thus, the DAO decided to further reduce emissions from the program. A “do not distribute” gauge was added that sent rewards back to the treasury. Around 77% of the budget was allocated to the “do not distribute” gauge. In January 2023, a proposal was passed to reduce weekly rewards to 250,000 MNDE. Over 75% of votes still went to the “do not distribute” gauge, meaning only around 60,000 MNDE were distributed weekly. In July 2023, liquidity mining rewards, including the TVL milestones, were fully paused.

In total, just over 78 million MNDE were distributed via the liquidity mining program. Of that, 10.5 million came from the first two TVL milestones, which were reached in the first week.

Token Exchange Program (June 2022): Distributed over 9.8 million MNDE to several DeFi protocols and validators in exchange for 483,000 USDC and 500,000 SLND.

In June 2022, a governance proposal was passed to execute a token exchange program with several DeFi protocols and validators, exchanging 9.8 million MNDE for 483,000 USDC and 500,000 SLND. The exchange program aimed to align Marinade with strategic partners, diversify its treasury, and enable selected partners to purchase MNDE at a size that would’ve caused over 30% slippage in the open market. Participating DeFi protocols included Solend, Raydium, Friktion, Port, and Crema. Participating validators included Staking Facilities, Shinobi Systems, Cogent Crypto, Laine (Stakewiz), Blockdaemon, Stakin, and Solana Compass. MNDE was distributed with a 30-day unlocking period.

Open Doors Program (February 2023 - January 2024): Distributed 1.7 million MNDE to protocols, validators, and individuals based on their contributions to mSOL growth, with another six months of rewards to distribute.

Marinade introduced the Open Doors Program in January 2023. Open Doors was a 12-month program offering up to 160 million MNDE (16% of the total supply) incentives to protocols, validators, and individuals. The program aimed to improve upon the liquidity mining program by rewarding entities retroactively based on their contributions to Marinade’s TVL increase rather than proactively trying to incentivize it.

The program distributed MNDE to:

  • Protocols based on their net mSOL TVL increase. The rewards went directly to protocols, leaving it up to them to pass it on to users.
  • Validators that converted their self-stake to liquid stake and/or received directed stake (once directed stake launched).
  • Individuals based on how much SOL was staked in Marinade through their referral link via Marinade’s referral program.

Rewards were tracked and distributed on a two-month cycle. The amount distributed in each two-month period equaled Marinade’s average TVL in the period subtracted by its TVL on February 1, 2023, then multiplied by four (giving out rewards at a rate of 4 MNDE per 1 mSOL) and then divided by six (to account for there being six two-month periods). Rewards were distributed back to protocols, validators, and individuals in proportion to their individual net mSOL TVL increase. Around, 2.6 million MNDE was distributed for the program.

Marinade Earn (October 2023 - present): Distributed 9.7 million MNDE to mSOL holders in Season 1, with up to 25 million MNDE eligible for distribution in the ongoing Season 2.

In September 2023, a proposal was passed to launch Season 1 of Marinade Earn. Marinade Earn Season 1 distributed 1 MNDE per 1 SOL staked in Marinade Liquid (i.e., mSOL token-holders) or Marinade Native from October 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023. Rewards were pro-rated if a user did not hold mSOL for the entirety of the program. Users would also receive rewards if their mSOL was deposited in select DeFi protocols. In addition, Marinade Earn incentivized Marinade Native referrals, distributing 1 MNDE per 1 SOL staked in Marinade Native via referral links. In total, around 9.7 million MNDE was distributed as Season 1 rewards, which were distributed at the end of the campaign with a 30-day unlocking period.

After Season 1, a proposal was passed to launch Season 2, rewarding Marinade stakers from January 1, 2024, to March 31, 2024. Changes from Season 1 include:

  • 1 MNDE per 2 SOL staked, instead of 1 MNDE per 1 SOL staked.
  • No more rewards for Marinade Native referrals, as only around 300,000 MNDE was earned via the Native referral campaign in Season 1.
  • Additional bonuses to:
    • MNDE holders locking tokens to direct stake will earn additional incentives based on 2 SOL per 1 MNDE ratio over the three months.
    • Validators based on their algorithmic stake score.
  • Total rewards capped at 25 million MNDE.

Governance

Beyond growth initiatives, MNDE is also used for Marinade DAO governance. When Marinade’s governance launched in April 2022, MNDE holders could participate by minting a Chef NFT, with several tiers based on their amount of MNDE. Marinade governance initially leveraged the governance platform Tribeca. However, in July 2023, Marinade governance migrated to Realms. The Chef NFTs were deprecated in favor of more traditional MNDE-based governance. To participate in governance, voters must lock up MNDE, which is then subject to a 30-day unlocking period.

Marinade relies on a set of multisigs to enact protocol changes. There is a 6/13 multisig containing parties from various Solana projects that controls contract-code upgrades. There’s also multisig containing five addresses controlled by the Marinade team that controls mSOL-SOL liquidity pool and other parameters. Lastly, Marinade uses a 4/7 multisig containing Marinade team members to control the Marinade Council Budget vault. When Marinade DAO approves budget proposals via governance, MNDE tokens are sent to the vault for distribution.

Protocol Usage and Key Metrics

Marinade Liquid grew quickly following its launch in August 2021, gaining over 7.3 million SOL in TVL within three months. Marinade Liquid TVL peaked at over 7.7 million SOL in January 2022. Despite the liquidity mining program, Marinade's growth stagnated in 2022, largely due to the end of the previous bull market. The bear market was especially exacerbated on Solana when FTX collapsed in early November. SOL’s price peaked on November 6, 2022, with the overall crypto market cap reaching its all-time high a few days later. DeFi activity on Solana fell notably following FTX’s collapse, reducing the demand for liquid staking solutions. Marinade Liquid’s TVL fell by around 1.3 million SOL in the month following the FTX collapse.

While Solana DeFi activity and the overall market have picked back up, Marinade Liquid’s TVL is still stagnant at 6.7 million SOL, or $1.2 billion. The lack of recent growth can be attributed to competition from new liquid staking protocols offering points and airdrop programs, detailed below.

However, Marinade as a whole has witnessed notable growth. Much of the growth has been driven by Marinade Native, whose TVL stands at 3.6 million SOL, or $630 million. Altogether, Marinade’s TVL is at 10.3 million SOL. With SOL’s rapid price appreciation since the beginning of Q4’23, Marinade’s TVL in USD has surged to $1.8 billion.

Marinade delegates SOL to around 250 validators. Distribution figures of Marinade’s delegated stake are the following:

  • 10 validators make up the top 33% of Marinade delegated stake.
  • 32 validators make up the top 50% of Marinade delegated stake.
  • 115 validators make up the top 90% of Marinade delegated stake.

Before the latest delegation strategy upgrade in March 2023, Marinade delegated to over 450 validators. At the time, around 350 validators were receiving less than 10,000 SOL from Marinade. With the fall in SOL’s price following the FTX collapse, this amount of SOL staked was deemed no longer sufficiently beneficial to validators. Thus, Marinade limited the number of validators in the automated delegation strategy set to 100. As noted above, the planned delegation update aims to increase this limit.

With the recent uptick in Solana network activity, mSOL APY is up to around 7.4%. For reference, SOL’s annualized inflation rate is at 5.4%. The mSOL APY figure is calculated based on mSOL’s “true price,” i.e., SOL in Marinade staking pool / mSOL minted.

mSOL’s market price can deviate from its “true price” based on market conditions and available liquidity. An example of this occurred on December 12, 2023, when an address sold around $8 million of mSOL, causing its price to dip below SOL’s due to insufficient liquidity. Marinade is in the process of integrating with Sanctum, which offers a unified liquidity pool and reserve for Solana liquid staking protocols.

LST looping has been a popular strategy to amplify staking yields, although it brings a higher risk. The process involves recursively borrowing the native network token against one of its LSTs. Several emerging protocols enable users to deploy this strategy using mSOL with one click, including Super Stake SOL, powered by Drift’s borrow/lend protocol, and Kamino Multiply.

MNDE has a market cap of $88 million, ranking it 517th among all tokens. There has been a strong correlation between MNDE’s market cap and fees paid when denominated in USD. Both figures have seen growth since the beginning of Q4’23. Marinade has collected over $1.2 million in fees in the past year. Around 90% of these fees have come from management fees, with the remaining from instant unstake fees. With most fees coming from Marinade Liquid management fees, fees paid denominated in SOL follow a similar trend to Marinade Liquid TVL: staying relatively flat since the beginning of 2022. Beyond SOL price appreciation and Marinade Liquid TVL growth, Marinade could increase its fees collected by beginning to monetize Marinade Native.

Competitive Landscape

Marinade was the first liquid staking protocol on Solana. From its launch until September 12, 2023, Marinade had maintained a majority share of Solana liquid staking TVL. The other main liquid staking protocol throughout that period was Lido, which sunsetted its Solana instance in early October 2023. However, in the second half of 2023, several newer protocols began gaining traction, driven by points programs for airdrops.

Jito introduced its points system in mid-September, which was then used as criteria for its early December airdrop. Jito’s liquid staking protocol launched in November 2022, along with its MEV-optimized fork of the Solana Labs validator. Jito only delegates to validators that run the Jito MEV client. While Marinade doesn’t share this restriction, most validators in Marinade’s set still run the client. Since its airdrop, Jito has surpassed Marinade in liquid staking TVL, at 9.2 million SOL to 6.9 million SOL, respectively. JTO’s market cap is almost $375 million.

Similarly, SolBlaze launched its points system in early August, soon after launching its token BLZE and began airdropping it to points holders. Of the total BLZE supply, 64.5% is being airdropped to users through the initial airdrop and ongoing rewards. SolBlaze has amassed 2.7 million SOL TVL.

At the end of September, lending protocol MarginFi launched its own LST, aptly named LST. The LST routes stake to three validators run by the MarginFi team, differentiating by trading off decentralization for a higher staking yield. MarginFi also recently released the whitepaper for stablecoin YBX, which will be backed by jitoSOL, mSOL, bSOL, and LST.

With the increase in Solana network activity, total base and priority fees have risen notably. Validators typically do not distribute these fees to stakers. In the past, this has not mattered much as fees made up around 1% of total rewards when combined with inflationary staking rewards. During Epoch 389, from March 14 to March 16, fees made up over 11% of total rewards. The increase led some single-validator LSTs like laineSOL and jucySOL to airdrop back a portion of these fees, raising their APYs above the standard 7-8% of other stake pools.

Sanctum is building a unified liquidity layer for Solana LSTs. It recently launched the Infinity protocol and the INF LST (previously scnSOL). Sanctum Infinity Pool is a multi-LST liquidity pool containing 22 LSTs, including mSOL. By allowing any LST to tap into another’s liquidity, Sanctum may prevent the monopolistic/oligopolistic market structures that have arisen in other liquid staking ecosystems such as Ethereum. Thus, while Sanctum benefits Marinade by increasing liquidity for mSOL, it may also disadvantage Marinade as one of the market leaders. However, as MetaDAO notes in its report for Marinade, Marinade’s PSR feature could provide a defensible moat for it over new entrants: a validator would be less likely to provide a bond for a liquid staking protocol that is not yet delegating them a meaningful amount of SOL.

Marinade Liquid maintains a 34% market share among Solana liquid staking protocols. Its drop in market share has largely come from the growth of the Solana liquid staking pie rather than Marinade Liquid losing TVL. For perspective, Solana’s liquid staking rate began 2023 at 2.6% and currently stands at almost 5%.

Marinade differentiates itself by also having a native staking product. For reference, when grouped with liquid staking protocols, Marinade Native has a 16% market share. With Marinade Native's early success in attracting stake, Marinade DAO may explore strategies to monetize the product.

Summary

Marinade was the first liquid staking solution on Solana. Since its August 2021 launch, it has amassed 6.7 million SOL ($1.2 billion as of March 15, 2024) in liquid staking TVL, but growth has stagnated since the end of 2021 due to the bear market and more competition. However, Marinade as a whole has continued to grow with the launch of Marinade Native, a native staking solution. Since its July 2023 launch, Marinade Native has gained 3.6 million SOL in TVL ($630 million as of March 15, 2024). The continued rollout of Protected Staking Rewards and the upcoming delegation strategy upgrade will allow Marinade to expand the number of validators it delegates to without sacrificing performance. With updates like these already well underway, Marinade is well-poised to capitalize on the recent momentum in the Solana ecosystem.

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Peter is a Research Analyst in Protocol Services focused on Layer-1s. He recently graduated from Boston College where he studied economics and computer science and led the school's blockchain club.

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Peter is a Research Analyst in Protocol Services focused on Layer-1s. He recently graduated from Boston College where he studied economics and computer science and led the school's blockchain club.

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