Marinade Announces Stake Auction Marketplace to ‘Boost Yields and Promote Solana Decentralization’

Marinade , Solana’s first liquid and native staking protocol, has announced the Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM) as a part of its V2 upgrade.

According to the press release shared with Cryptonews, SAM is the latest feature in the V2 upgrade, following the launch of Marinade Native and Protected Staking Rewards (PSR) .

SAM is an open public auction platform where stakers delegate their SOL for validators to bid on.

This empowers users to maximize staking yields and make Solana more decentralized, the team remarked.

Live auctions will officially begin in August and bid distributions will happen in the fourth quarter.

Additionally, the team argued that the SAM launch would make staking on Solana more stable and censorship-resistant.

The move ensures that all participants receive “the best staking rewards.”

Notably, the team will provide a simulation of the SAM at the end of June. They plan to test for the most efficient user interface.

Addressing Major Staking Issues

The announcement noted that stakers currently face several significant issues.

They need to monitor validator performance manually. This, it said, is “incredibly confusing and inefficient.”

Another issue is security vulnerabilities.

Additionally, stakers often see irreversible reward losses when validators underperform or the node operator commissions change.

Per the team, they created Marinade V2 to solve these problems.

The goal is to make staking “easier, safer, and more widely accessible.”

When they participate in the SAM, stakers automatically delegate their stake to an open market of validators to bid.

The feature enhances yields beyond the current APY of 9% available from staking with a 0% commission validator.

Also, the annual percentage yield (APY) “could be as high as 9%” when including Maximal Extractable Value (MEV), priority fees, and other revenue streams.

According to Michael Repetny, Core Contributor at Marinade, “this is a major milestone for Marinade and Solana, as V2 constructs a seamless staking experience that fuels greater ecosystem participation.”

Repetny argued that Marinade is setting a new standard for Solana staking by eliminating smart contract risks through an automated delegation strategy.

“The introduction of SAM will ultimately rebalance optimizing staking rewards for our users and support network decentralization simultaneously,” he said.

Meanwhile, Marinade also launched Marinade Native in July 2023. It is described as the first product on Solana that offers the performant and permissionless staking strategy of Marinade, but without the liquid staking smart contract.