Marinade Finance

In 2021, Marinade Finance originated from the Solana x Serum Hackathon (March 2021) and was launched as the first liquid staking protocol on Solana, introducing mSOL and the MNDE governance token, pioneering decentralized stake delegation and protocol-managed validator selection. In November the same year, Marinade activated full on-chain governance for the DAO, enabling MNDE holders to participate directly in major protocol decisions.

In the wake of the FTX-Alameda collapse, Marinade Finance experienced temporary mSOL/SOL price dislocation but maintained protocol stability. The project had minimal exposure to FTX/Alameda and quickly replaced their multisig signers with trusted Solana ecosystem participants, ensuring protocol security.

In November 2022, Marinade explored Solana’s evolving transaction priority / MEV landscape, including the introduction of mTransactions to better route priority transactions and optimize yield for stakers.

In July 2023, Marinade announced Marinade Native, allowing users to stake SOL directly with 100+ validators in a non-custodial, non-smart-contract setup while preserving expected yields. Within the first month, Marinade Native surpassed 1.5M SOL staked, reinforcing Marinade’s position as one of Solana’s largest staking platforms. Throughout late 2023, Marinade prepared Protected Staking Rewards (PSR), a mechanism where validators post bonds that cover underperformance/downtime, so stakers’ rewards are protected.

In April 2024, Marinade formally introduced PSR into its delegation strategy, requiring validators to post on-chain bonds that compensate stakers for performance shortfalls. PSR became a core feature of Marinade V2, highlighted at Solana Breakpoint 2024 as a way to ensure more stable, predictable yields and effectively “insure” staking rewards against validator downtime.

By 2025, Marinade achieved SOC 2 Type I and later Type II compliance, becoming one of the first major staking protocols with this level of audited security and operational control. This is central to its institutional staking offering, used by custodians (e.g., BitGo) and tied to proposed Solana staking ETF structures, where Marinade provides the underlying staking infrastructure.

By June 2025, Marinade Select, a curated validator set, reached ~840k SOL TVL and has processed ~$132M in staked assets, with ~7.0–7.7% APY and 99.93% validator uptime; PSR bonds effectively backstop this to near 100% for stakers.

Starting in September 2025, following DAO proposals MIP-11, MIP-13, and MIP-15, Marinade began using 50% of protocol fees for automated on-chain MNDE buybacks repurchasing ~1.28M MNDE with ~$181k in protocol revenue by quarter-end.