Marinade Finance is the flagship non-Jito liquid staking option for Solana. mSOL — Marinade's LST — is one of the two dominant Solana staking tokens, and Marinade Native offers a non-liquid alternative for maximalists who don't want an LST at all.
Two products in one protocol
mSOL (liquid staking): deposit SOL, receive mSOL, use it across Solana DeFi (Kamino, Orca, Raydium, Marginfi). Non-custodial smart contract holds the SOL and delegates to a curated set of validators.
Marinade Native: stake SOL directly to validators without a liquid receipt token. Marinade's Directed Stake system delegates to a diverse validator set, promoting decentralization. Withdraw anytime.
Fees and yield
- Protocol fee: 8% of staking rewards
- Net APR: competitive with Jito's base staking (excluding MEV)
- MEV: Marinade validators do not preferentially capture MEV; users prioritizing MEV yield should choose JitoSOL
When to choose Marinade over Jito
MEV extraction ethics are debated. Users uncomfortable earning yield from MEV should choose Marinade — mSOL captures only base staking rewards, no MEV component. For MEV-agnostic users seeking maximum yield, JitoSOL is the better choice.
Verdict
Marinade is Solana's top MEV-free liquid staking option and the reference decentralization-focused choice. For users who prefer not to profit from MEV extraction, Marinade is essential.