RIADeFiPublished by Ketju Research
Not approved · Staking

Ketju memo: Marinade (mSOL)

Not approvedPublished by Ketju Research

This memo sets out what the holder owns, who controls it, how holders could lose money, and whether a position can be sold. The advisor decides any client action and amount. Not investment, legal, tax, or compliance advice.

Summary

Ketju does not approve Marinade (mSOL): its stake now sits with 46 validators, far below the 200 that Ketju requires, and identifiable pools for selling mSOL hold under $2M against Ketju's $25M liquidity minimum. MIP-3, approved in November 2024, retired the algorithmic rebalancer that spread stake across 400+ validators and scored decentralisation into each allocation. All stake now goes through the Stake Auction Marketplace, a fixed auction that ranks validators by yield (commission plus bid) and fills from the top. Decentralisation became a side constraint. Marinade's own validators API, read 2026-08-14, shows the top five validators with 41.1% of mSOL stake, and two hosting providers (Amarutu and Allnodes) with nearly 40% together. Jito's Steward now spreads stake in near-equal targets across the top 400 validators. mSOL liquid TVL fell from $1.43B in January 2025 to $181M, per DefiLlama. On 2023-12-12 an $8M market sale broke the peg about 15% intraday, into deeper books than exist today. We found no contract failure. In five years on mainnet Marinade has had no exploit and no loss of staked principal from a contract, and delayed unstake worked throughout the 2023 depeg.

Review triggers

  • Ketju reviews mSOL again only after active mSOL stake is spread across at least 200 validators for two consecutive quarters, with the top five below 20% and no hosting provider above 20%
  • Ketju reviews mSOL again only after an mSOL sale at the proposed size quotes below 50 basis points and delayed unstake completes within 7 days in three monthly tests
  • Ketju reviews mSOL again only while mSOL liquid TVL exceeds $250M and independently reproducible executable sale depth exceeds the $25M liquidity minimum
  • Ketju reviews mSOL again only after the program upgrade authority, pause powers, and Council signers and 4-of-7 threshold are reproduced from current on-chain state
  • An active-validator count below 200, an mSOL/SOL discount beyond 2% for 48 hours, delayed unstake beyond 7 days, or an unaudited delegation change keeps mSOL not approved

Facts

Verdict
Not approved
Type
Staking
Chains examined
Solana
Instruments
MSOL
Reviewed
Last confirmed

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