Marinade Kitchen Stories: April 2022
Hello, decentralizooors of Solana!
As the calendar turns to May it’s time to update everyone on what happened during the last month in the Kitchen, and it’s an understatement to say that things happened!
Between the launch of Marinade NFT Chefs opening the path to on-chain governance, the Decentralizer, a public good service created in partnership with Solana Labs, new integrations and app improvements, and a lot of activity on our Forum to begin the evolution of Marinade, the Kitchen has been busy!
Let’s review in depth what was accomplished in April:
NFT Chefs and DAO on-chain governance
You may have noticed the swarm of cute octopi on Discord and social media, which represent locked MNDE and active participation in Marinade governance.
On April 4th, the mint of Limited Edition Chefs NFT began and allowed MNDE holders to lock their MNDE in exchange for cute NFTs that carry voting power in the Marinade DAO.
As of today, more than 1,300 NFTs have been minted, locking more than 26.9M MNDE in governance, which represents 31% of the total supply of MNDE.
Those Chef NFTs also found their on-chain utility really fast, as on-chain governance started just after the mint, with a number of proposals appearing on the Forum. Let’s take some time to highlight the different proposals that have surfaced:
- MNDE voting on Validators stake through gauges
- Compensation plan for the unstake incident of Epoch 284 (VOTE IS LIVE! Click here to cast your vote until Tuesday, May 3)
- GoblinGold’s proposal for a tight integration on Marinade app
- Gauges to allocate the Liquidity Mining distribution
- Longer lock-ups leading to increased voting power and token emission rewards
- Moving the average performance for validator used by the Delegation strategy to 10 epochs instead of 5
If you haven’t seen or participated to those discussions, it’s not too late for any of those! On-chain votes to determine the future of those proposals are already created or will be soon, so we invite you to visit the Forum and Tribeca and share your point of view or cast your vote, thanks to your Chef NFTs!
The forum also allowed discussions to be opened to reflect together on some important topics, like “How could validators help Marinade’s mission without directing stake away from themselves” or “Should the Marinators channel on Discord be accessible to everyone”. It is truly exciting to see so much activity and quality debates happening in those discussions, and the arrival of on-chain governance propels Marinade into a new era, where MNDE holders have full power.
If you haven’t already minted your Chef NFT, the Limited Edition octopi are still available. Don’t forget to show it off in the Discord once you’ve minted it!
New chefs in the kitchen
This monthly update is also the perfect opportunity to introduce PlayerOfBits, a new Chef in the kitchen that took Head of Governance position with the aim to articulate and lead those discussions towards on-chain votes and assist governooors in their construction of proposals. Thanks to him, a template for proposals is already available, as well as an proposal example. Feel free to reach out to him in the #governance channel if you have anything to discuss regarding governance matters!
You can also find his own introduction in the latest article regarding Marinade’s governance.
Another Chef joined the Kitchen in April and it’s none other than Torab, taking the position of Head of Partnerships! Thanks to his expertise and experience, he will lead the growth of Marinade in the entire Solana Ecosystem and work to further develop mSOL and MNDE! Torab joined the Amun podcast to chat about mSOL. Watch the chat on YouTube.
Chefs in San Francisco
In April, you may have spotted the Chefs hanging on the streets of San Francisco or drinking organic coconut water at the Solana office!
This trip was an opportunity for Marinade Chefs to meet with a number of Solana actors and talk about the future of liquid staking, DeFi on Solana, NFTs, and much more.
First, the Chefs met some members of MonkeDAO and attended a very enjoyable San Francisco Giants baseball game, in between more collaborative conversations about Solana.
This trip was also an opportunity to visit the Solana office and meet the founders of major Solana DeFi projects, strengthening the bonds that Marinade already has with the whole ecosystem as a fundamental protocol unlocking liquidity for everyone.
Marinade Chefs also had the pleasure to meet Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and share words about the Marinade vision and the evolution of the ecosystem. They came out of it with even more motivation and ideas to make Solana thrive as a censorship-resistant and decentralized blockchain.
Growing and level up your Chef NFT
Only a few days after the release of the Marinade Chefs NFTs, some community members had found their forever octopus by minting a level 1 NFT. But at launch, there was no way to level it up and make it bigger and cuter.
To solve this, Marinade devs got to work just after the release in order to release the Growing functionality, which arrived on-chain only 10 days after the launch!
If you love your octopus, don’t forget to feed him MNDE from time to time! 😎
Marinade DAO Financial Overview — April 2022
As of April 27, 2022, Marinade holds in its treasury a bundle of mSOL, MNDE, and USDC accounting for $680,000 (at current prices), split in different liquidity pools, lending protocols or kept to deal with expenses. This treasury receives every month the fees generated by Marinade, but also can access the DAO treasury allocation (35%) that can be used by the team and MNDE holders for operations, grant programs, strategic partnerships, etc.
For the month of April, Marinade monthly expenses were $108,553, or approximately 1050 mSOL at current prices. $44,766 were also used in MNDE (unlocked by the executive team from the operational DAO treasury) in order to pay for services, marketing and external contributions. It is also worth noting that MNDE allocations for contributors have started being unlocked for the contributors that have been working for more than 6 months (according to the vesting schedule), accounting for approximately 10M MNDE distributed (locked for 30 days).
For the same month, management fees for the delegated SOL to Marinade and instant unstake fees brought in 823 mSOL, or $85,015 at current prices.
Resulting in a net negative of 223 mSOL for the month of April, or approximately $23,029. This represents around 3.3% of the existing treasury, which was able to easily cover for the missing revenues.
As stated in the previous Kitchen Stories, Marinade is committed to build financial dashboard accessible to all and the work on this project is ongoing.
Another important financial update is the ongoing governance vote regarding the compensation plan following the unstake incident that happened in Epoch 284. The on-chain proposal suggests that Marinade fees would be lowered to 0% for three months or until 2646 SOL have been funneled into the SOL staked pool, in order to make mSOL appreciate at a higher rate, compensating the missed gains of the epoch 284. If this proposal is accepted by the DAO, expenses for the next months will be covered by a mix of the existing treasury, immediate unstake fees and funds from the MNDE DAO treasury.
Marinade.Finance landing page and App upgrades
As always, the Marinade team is continuously trying to improve the experience of using Marinade. You might have noticed the new DeFi page for example, organized in categories to facilitate your search for additional yield with your newly acquired mSOL.
The Marinade landing page is also slowly growing and seeing new subpages appear, making it easier for everyone to access information quickly and efficiently. A Marinade Cookbook designed to help any user navigate through the DeFi world with their mSOL is also in preparation and should be released soon.
Do not forget that your opinion will always be heard! If you see opportunity for improvements or missing elements that you believe would have their place on the landing page or in a subpage, feel free to bring that up in Marinade’s Discord, in the #suggestion-box channel!
Open Kitchen and community events
A bit after the NFT launch, Marinade Chefs also joined the community for the traditional Open Kitchen in order to discuss the launch, answer questions that appeared regarding the NFTs and discuss of the future. If you missed it, it’s available on Marinade’s youtube channel!
In April, we also saw the return of the Alpha League Racing game, for a tournament between the communities of Marinade, Solend and Drift protocol!
With 14 marinators in the top 20 and a Marinator taking the first place, MNDE holders showed that they can race! This event allowed every participant to come home with a small mSOL prize and was appreciated by all the participating communities!
Another event that took place on the Marinade Discord was the beloved “GM for Coffee” event, back for the entire month of April. Just by wishing a “gm” to your fellow marinators every day, you had the opportunity to win a small USDC prize allowing you to pay for your next coffee. Marinade Chefs truly enjoy the tight community forming in the Discord, sharing their day, their investment strategies, their opinion on the latest hot topics, and it’s a pleasure to see familiar faces wishing “gm” everyday and creating such a vibrant atmosphere in the Discord. If you still haven’t jumped in, join the Discord and become a Marinator!
In case you’re not subscribed to the Marinade Medium, you may have also missed the Validator Spotlight Series, counting already two articles featuring Laine and Cogent Crypto! If you always wanted to learn more about the validators that make Solana the performing blockchain that it is, head over to the already published articles and stay tuned for more to come!
It can also be noted that the #Marinators channel is now restricted to Marinators, and that the requirement for this role has been changed from 20 MNDE to owning a Marinade Chef NFT (at least!). Marinators have voted and expressed themselves, deciding that a closed environment would be more comfortable to discuss and share things.
We can also mention the newly created #good-reads channel on Discord, where Marinators share their favorite and most instructive reads and spread the alpha!
The Decentralizer, a new product helping to make Solana more decentralized
During the month of April, Marinade released a new product named the Decentralizer. This product was designed in collaboration with Solana Labs and partially founded by a grant from the Solana Foundation. It is addressed to specific SOL users that don’t want (or may not) delegate the withdraw authority of their existing stake accounts.
When using the Decentralizer, you will not receive mSOL in return, but will only delegate the management authority of your existing (or created) stake accounts to the Decentralizer, which will automatically spread your stake to multiple validators and reduce the risks of a single validator not performing and you missing on all your rewards.
This product allows users that are not able to use mSOL because of legal or personal reasons to still spread the stake between multiple validators and reinforce the censorship resistance and decentralization of the Solana network. As it doesn’t use a smart contract, The Decentralizer makes the process of spreading your stake more accessible to large SOL token holders or institutional entities.
Marinade took upon itself to work on this project to keep offering ways to make Solana more secure, robust and decentralized, and it’s worth noting that Marinade will not apply any fees on this service. As a regular user, you probably should not be interested in using it, as you’d miss out on the additional yield that mSOL provides, but the goal is that this new product offers a way for some users, currently blocked out of liquid staking for legal or tax-related reasons, to join the quest of decentralizing Solana.
Phew, it’s been a busy April and the Chefs are already buidling for May! Stay tuned for more exciting updates coming to the DAO and keep an eye out for more announcements about on-chain voting opportunities using your NFT Chefs!
About Marinade
Marinade.Finance is the first non-custodial liquid staking protocol built on Solana. Stake your SOL tokens with Marinade and receive mSOL (“marinated SOL”) tokens in return that can be used in decentralized finance (DeFi). mSOL is the most widely integrated collateralized version of SOL. The price of mSOL goes up relative to SOL each epoch, with rewards being accrued into your stake account.
Marinade’s delegation strategy stakes to 400+ validators that are selected automatically by an open-source, fair formula based on performance, commission, and decentralization.
Marinade includes mSOL->SOL swap, so you can “Unstake Now” and receive your SOL immediately for a small fee. You can also directly exchange between mSOL and SOL on secondary markets at the current rate. Finally, you can unstake your SOL with zero fee by waiting 2–3 days for the Solana cool-down period (Delayed Unstake).
