Kitchen Stories: Monthly update for April 2024

• Protected Staking Rewards officially launched with over 400 validators participating and the system already recovering SOL rewards for stakers.
• Two new DAO proposals include a 25M Marinade Earn campaign focused on mSOL liquidity on chain, and a new delegation strategy featuring a stake auction marketplace for validators.
• Coinbase Prime, a qualified custodian for institutional investors, added support for mSOL.

It’s an exciting spring around Solana with lots of IRL events around the world from London to Austin to Crete, not to mention a soggy Dubai for Token 2049. At the time of this writing, the team is in Istanbul, attending Solana Crossroads, and is excited to present some alpha on the new staking meta, Marinade v2 (be sure to follow the blog for all the details of v2 here).

Following Solana Crossroads, Marinade will be attending and sponsoring the Snapshot event held during Consensus in Austin and IslandDAO in Crete. If you’re planning to be at any of these places, be sure to reach out and say hello (and grab some Marinade swag).

April was a productive month that saw the launch of Protected Staking Rewards and featured many exciting partnership announcements and some thoughtful proposals for the community and protocol on the forum.

Let’s get to the latest kitchen stories:

🛡️ Protected Staking Rewards goes live

Protected Staking Rewards officially went live in April and are already helping recover SOL rewards that would have been lost because of suboptimal validator performance.

PSR brings SLA’s common in institutional staking on chain for SOL stakers of any size. Marinade can report over 400 validators have set up their bond to be eligible for Marinade stake!

Validators, if you haven’t set up your bond yet, you can do so by following the instructions in this github link: https://github.com/marinade-finance/validator-bonds/tree/main/packages/validator-bonds-cli#funding-bond-account**

Follow along: Want to see which validators have set up their bond and when protected events occur? You can see all the details here: https://psr.marinade.finance/

April Treasury Report

Marinade TVL ended the month at 10.2M SOL (-0.15% MoM) with revenues to the protocol at 1,982 mSOL ($372,669 in USD). Operational expenses for the month were $171,220 ($5,000 of which was paid in 20,080 MNDE). This generated a monthly profit of $201,449 with $2,317,409 in the operational treasury.

DAO and proposals

Two notable proposals have hit the DAO forum for discussion and potential vote.

1. A proposal about a third installment of Marinade Earn features a 25M campaign. This version would seed mSOL on-chain liquidity at partners like Kamino and Meteora with MNDE rewards. Check out the details:
2. New Delegation Strategy: The next proposal is an in-depth rebuild of Marinade’s delegation strategy. Some key points:

• It makes the delegation criteria for validators simpler and faster to receive Marinade stake.
• Introduces a Stake Auction Marketplace that lets validators adjust their commission to Marinade stakers without changing their overall commission to receive more Marinade stake.
• 85% of stake would be performance based, 10% MNDE voting, and 5% decentralization bonus.

Validators and stakers are encouraged to examine the proposal and see how it would affect their overall allocation with Marinade. Share your feedback on the forum or in the validators channel in Discord. https://forum.marinade.finance/

Community & Partnerships

Good news for institutions: mSOL is now available for custody on Coinbase Prime. Coinbase announced support for mSOL. mSOL is the only Solana liquid staking token available to Coinbase exchange users, and now it’s also available to Prime customers.

• MNDE is now available to lend on Solend: Following the proposal passing in Solend DAO, MNDE is now listed as an isolated asset on Solend.
• Marinade will also sponsor and present at Snapshot during the Consensus conference. Will you be in Austin? If so, come say hi and get some Marinade swag.
• Marinade also hosted weekly Solana BBQ’s with projects throughout the ecosystem. Thanks to teams like Dialect, XP Ticket and Dean’s List for stopping by in April.

Lastly, Marinade conducted a treasure hunt on social media and congrats to the follower who guessed the phrase correctly! Keep an eye out on X in May for another chance to win!

Marinade 101 video campaign

Do you have friends who still aren’t sure what Solana staking is, and specifically how Marinade does it best? Marinade rolled out three short explainers on its social media in April in a Marinade 101 series. You can see them all on this Youtube playlist:

Save the Date: StakePoint

Heading to Singapore for Breakpoint this September? Be sure to save the date for StakePoint, a pre-breakpoint conference event held on September 19th.

About StakePoint: Pioneering institutional grade staking through performance, compliance, and risk management. Immerse yourself in a day of educational panels and demos led by the most knowledgeable contributors to the Solana network and the staking ecosystem. See how traditional finance services can acquire key details and gain industry insights into how they can benefit from Solana’s decentralization, sustainability, and performance.

If you’re interested in attending, visit this luma link to request a spot (registrations must be approved): https://lu.ma/durn97l8

Marinade In the News

• Messari’s First Quarter 2024 report on Marinade
• Solana Floor: State of Solana staking
• Marinade is among list of sponsors for Solana’s Breakpoint conference in Singapore
• Check out Marinade institutional growth lead Arun Krishnakumar’s Solana institutional roundup for April.
• Marinade Validator Spotlight: Gate Omega