Solana and the future of Sound Money

How to DeFi like you know what you are doing: A beginner’s handbook Navigating Solana Smart Contracts

(This article is not financial advice, examples are for educational purposes, only — you also can catch a short summary of this article in part 2)

While corporate media reports about Sam Bankfraud, the SEC, and any money laundering/crypto scheme that they can get their hands on, Solana (SOL) is quietly making technological strides for the future of sound money.

Let’s get you in on the action.

To get some Solana you can use Coinbase or by accepting $SOL for payment for products or services.

I like to use a phantom wallet.

Make sure to never spend it all so that you can always cover the little transaction fees.

Good practice is to always hodl at least ~.1 to be able to get around.

Choose Solana then click deposit

Copy your address or use the QR code to make a deposit.

Easy, right?

To stake your coins head over to marinade.finance so you earn some passive $SOL.

You will also earn $MNDE (Til Dec 31 2023) while also earning over 8% APY on your Solana holdings.

Owning $MNDE makes you part treasury owner of Solana’s largest liquidity provider.

(Thanks for using my link for marinade to try it out)

You have a choice as to how you want to stake, native or liquid staking.

(link to more info about how directed stake works)

The risk of native staking is validator slashing, and that it takes a couple days to unstake (If you want your stake to remain liquid at all times, use mSOL).

Marinade helps to make this risk even less minimal by dividing your stake between the top 100 validators when you choose the automatic selection. Slashing occurs to a validator if it goes off line.

Pick good validators with high up time or just use marinade for automatic staking.

Choose Automated to have your Solana spread out amongs the top 100 validators, mitigating slashing risk.

Native staking can be done in a cold wallet and you will still earn $MNDE rewards til the end of the year while your Solana sits safe, earning you SOL APY.

The easy choice is to let marinade decide.

This is similar to staking in your phantom wallet but your stake can automatically be delegated to top validators.

(Read how to keep your Solana and digital assets safe, here)

Liquid Staking

The other option is to stake your $SOL in the Liquid Pool.

This gives you the potential for more rewards because it will make your stake “liquid” within Solana’s DeFi ecosystem.

Liquid staking gives you $mSOL for trading, yield farming, or to use for collateral to get crypto-loans while your underlying $SOL is still locked up safely, earning you income.

Once you spend $mSOL, that portion of your stake is simply ended until you re-delegate it.

You might consider using a separate wallet for other protocols to try out $mSOL.

This would be like your “cash” account or “walking around money”. Adjust your wallets as needed to suit your needs/financial goals.

Look for $MNDE bonuses on other Solana DeFi protocols and increase your $mSOL positions over the next couple of months as you learn your way around.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

$MNDE Marinade’s governance token will be paid to early adopters who hold/maintain/grow $mSOL positions in Solana DeFi pools.

$MNDE will be used to help govern the marinade protocol in a decentralized way.

You can use the $mSOL For crypto loans on platforms such as solend.fi or yield farm various liquidity pools across the eco-system.

Keep in mind that any $mSOL that you spend will be taken from your underlying stake but marinade makes it easy to re-delegate at any time.

Test pools with a small amount before considering increasing the position — $USDC/$mSOL on tulip.garden

DYOR about the pools you are putting your $mSOL into and start small, avoid swapping your $mSOL or $SOL for risky illiquid tokens that are not worth putting your underlying position at risk.

Now that your device is also your bank.

You always have access to a little $USDC/cash anywhere in the world (as long as you maintain your positions and manage risk), whenever you need it without the need to immediately sell any of your underlying Solana position.

In my opinion, this is what will make protocols like these and the primary underlying assets become more valuable the deeper we get into a high-interest environment.

Here is a list of participating protocols and a link to the forum post where you should be able to find most of the others.

Quick list of some other DeFi platforms to try using your $mSOL on

We will see more games, products, and companies utilizing this new tech. As the eco system grows, so will the value of your Solana.

Solana’s utility doesn’t end at DeFi and investing.

You can Explore $NFT marketplaces like tensor.trade, where cognentcrypto.io is selling $NFTs that pay .01% of their validator’s income (for about ~8–11 $SOL at the time of this writing).

There are new games on SOL now such as the first-person shooter, ev.io and the space mmo, Star Atlas.

There are many technologies to explore and I would love to hear about what you come across in the comments.

Let us know in the comments what games/protocols on Solana you have discovered.

Next time there is bad news about crypto all we have to do is remember what is going on behind the scenes and keep stacking because early birds always get the most worms.

(All of these investments are risky, please don’t play with more than you can afford to lose. Protocols change over time.)

Source — Marinade Blog

Litepaper

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make your own validator

make your own dao

Thank you for reading!

You can find my ref link to marinade.finance here.

You can support articles like this by donating $SOL (or $mSOL) directly:

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(This article is not financial advice, examples are educational purposes, only)