Introducing MNDE — Marinade’s secret sauce
Marinade, the first liquid staking protocol on Solana, launched on mainnet on August 2, 2021.
While it’s only been a month since the start, we have all witnessed the exciting growth, specifically:
- 870,000+ SOL staked, translating to $100M+ TVL
- A broad spectrum of mSOL integrations across the Solana DeFi ecosystem, with a leading mSOL-SOL pool at Saber with $100M+ liquidity
- mSOL surpassing SOL to become the #1 asset used on the lending protocol Port Finance
At Marinade, we all feel very blessed and find these to be fantastic achievements given that:
- We’re self-funded with the help of grants from the Solana Foundation and Serum
- It’s all been healthy, organic growth so far, without any incentives from our side
- We’re already cash-flow positive and became financially independent through our product
Marinade’s mission is to create an easy-to-use liquid staking protocol that dramatically improves the decentralization of Solana. The solution is available now, but that’s not enough. It needs care so it can support the upcoming growth as the whole ecosystem onboards millions of new users in the years to come.
To build the tastiest decentralized staking solution on Solana, we need more cooks. We are opening and decentralizing our kitchen so the community can help in navigating the flavors and ingredients.
Main Course — The $MNDE Token
Marinade (MNDE) has all the basic ingredients that a proper governance token needs:
- Valueless, no sale, and distributed only to those who use or support the protocol
- Aligns incentives for the community, users, partners, and the team
- Drives the development of Marinade and creates a collaborative space for the core attributes of the protocol as well as the outer layers
Dinner is Served
The hard cap of MNDE is 1 billion tokens, split between the three pillars of the project:
- 35% (350M) — The Marinade community, driving the formation of the Marinade DAO
- 35% (350M) — DAO treasury to finance the future of liquid staking and beyond
- 30% (300M) — Chefs (team) allocation, with a 6-month cliff and 2 years linear vesting
The Marinade DAO allocation of 350M MNDE is split into three working budgets:
- 76% — Farming and liquidity providers to open doors and establish the presence of mSOL across the Solana ecosystem
- 20% — Milestone budget for additional tokens to be distributed upon reaching significant TVL levels
- 4% — Marketing budget for bounties, contests, education, and fun
The allocations among these budgets may be changed, with the community involved in the conversation.
Straight from the Farm
Decentralizing Marinade will be a process, not a marketing event with triple-digit APYs. MNDE tokens will be distributed weekly in a linear fashion over the course of 2 years, so even the people arriving late can find a seat at the table.
The pace of distribution may change in order to facilitate an enjoyable meal for all the Marinators.
Milestones
We feast together. As the Marinade team and community work together in serving the tastiest liquid staking experience on Solana — measured by reaching and sustaining TVL for a few epochs — additional batches of MNDE will be distributed the following week to the MNDE farms for everyone to enjoy.
Retroactive Rewards
15M MDNE tokens (1.5%) were allocated for retroactive rewards in order to spread the stake and voting power to the first protocol users. Details on the retroactive rewards will be announced later.
We can confirm we’re already watching on multiple places — make sure your favorite projects don’t miss out on this and allow their users to utilize their mSOL.
Wen Token?
Preparations to launch MNDE are underway, internally and together with our partners. We expect to launch MNDE in the following weeks. Expect more information on farming and incentives to come in the following articles.
Become a Chef
As stated earlier, we plan to open our kitchen so that our community has an even greater say over our next steps.
While doing so, Marinade is also looking to bring more Chefs to the team. That’s why we started to work on the process so that anyone can check if they’re a match, find all the relevant info, and become a Chef.
For now, we look at forming the teams around four specific sectors in our kitchen:
- Product — Development, security, design
- Community — Customer success, community engagement, user research, communications, branding
- Integrations — Business development, tech writing, tokenomics
- DAO Ops — Internal docs, PM/reporting, HR, financials
The idea is to empower those teams with goals, budgets, guidelines, and all the support needed, so they can operate on their own and help the Marinade DAO to thrive.
We’re not thinking that much in terms of positions, but rather in bringing top talent to the table. Marinade is interested in those who learn fast, share a passion for Solana, and can identify with Marinade’s mission.
If you think you could contribute and our previous articles resonated with you, we’d love to chat! Let us know what you’re interested in through the “Become a Chef” form.
As always, you’re also welcome to join our community on the Marinade Discord. We want to hear your thoughts on the tokens distribution, team formation, or any other topic regarding Marinade or Solana in general.
Bon appétit!
Yours,
Marinade 👨🍳
