Solana whale briefly sends mSOL plummeting by selling more than $5 million of token

In less than a half hour, the price of Marinade Finance's Solana-based liquid staking derivative m SOL -2.74% dropped like a rock on Tuesday.

The mSOL token fell below $67 at 12:35 p.m. ET after trading around $77 just minutes earlier, according to The Block price data . Overall, mSOL fell as much as 18% on Tuesday before it quickly rebounded, soaring back above $77 as of 1:57 p.m. ET.

One large holder, or whale, appears to have driven the steep decline by swapping more than $5 million worth of the mSOL derivative for SOL, according to The Block Research data.

Solana-based derivative mSOL price movement. Image: The Block

Introduction of incentive program

At the beginning of this year, Marinade Finance launched a new token incentive program to reward users who deposit their solana (SOL) coins in exchange for the liquid staking derivative called mSOL. Dubbed "Open Doors," the program intended to give out up to 160 million marinade tokens as rewards to users throughout this year.

The goal was to grow the amount of solana locked on the Marinade platform by 40 million SOL, the team said on Twitter at the time.