State of Solana Staking: Marinade Leads Native Staking Rates

Despite what the detractors will have you believe, Solana DeFi is about so much more than just memecoins. 

Solana’s staking landscape has exploded throughout 2024, with surging APYs and the rising prominence of Liquid Staking Tokens (LST) giving Solana holders a diverse and competitive range of staking options.

What are some of the latest developments and highlights in Solana staking and where can you get the best yield on your $SOL?

Marinade Finance Leads Native Staking Market

Marinade Finance, one of Solana’s original staking providers, has been leading the charge of native staking. The application’s V2 staking platform has proven a roaring success, with Marinade delivering Solana’s highest native staking APY at 11.64%.

[​​https://x.com/SolanaFloor/status/1861035323679035739]

Buoyed by the success of its V2 staking platform, Marinade’s TVL (Total Value Locked) recently breached $2B based on DefiLlama data. 

However, despite rising USD value, Marinade’s $SOL TVL still sits at 8.07M, 48.82% away from its all-time high of 12.01M recorded on February 29, 2024. Combined with its industry-leading native staking rewards, this suggests that Marinade still has plenty of further TVL growth potential.

LST Dominance up to 7.8%

While native staking is often considered the safest way of staking $SOL, liquid staking has enjoyed renewed popularity in recent months. Centralized exchanges have made bold steps into the liquid staking landscape, with Binance and ByBit both launching their own LST tokens.

According to Dune Analytics data LSTs now make up approximately 7.9% of all staked $SOL, with 2.49M SOL shifting to LSTs in the last 30 days. Marinade’s $mSOL is currently the ecosystem’s second-largest LST behind Jito, representing 16.45% of liquid staking market share.

Institutional Staking

Beyond a growing TVL, Solana’s staking landscape is expanding into unprecedented areas. In one of the biggest developments in the staking ecosystem, VanEck Europe recently announced that it had enabled staking within its $VSOL ETP (Exchange Traded Product).

Staking represents a complex obstacle within TradFi circles, limiting how institutional funds can engage with crypto assets like Solana. Without staking, Solana-based ETPs suffer from inflation due to token issuance, making many TradFi players uncomfortable offering Proof-of-Stake assets to their clients.

Boasting over $73M in AUM (Assets Under Management), VanEck’s $VSOL staking ETP is pioneering staking adoption at an institutional level. The development highlights TradFi’s growing trust in the Solana ecosystem, with staking providers working hard to bring staking to institutional funds at scale.

With institutional staking becoming a reality, it is likely that more asset managers like VanEck will opt to provide these services to clients. Beyond increasing demand for Solana, institutional firms would also be required to lock funds in staking contracts, potentially causing a supply crunch on circulating $SOL.

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