Marinade charges no deposit fee on any product. The only costs you may pay are when you exit a position, and one performance fee on the USDC Vault. Everything is below.
What It Costs You, by Product
Product | Deposit | Exit cost | Ongoing fee |
Marinade Native | None | Instant Unstake: 0.10% to 0.40%, set by the market | None |
None | Instant Unstake: 0.10% to 0.40%, set by the market | None | |
Marinade Liquid (mSOL) | None | Instant Unstake: no Marinade fee, but it is a swap, so price impact applies | None |
USDC Earn Vault | None | Withdrawals are free and instant | 5% of the interest you earn |
Marinade Recipes are not a separate row: they are a reward-token choice on a Marinade Native position, so the Marinade Native costs above apply whichever reward token a Native position is paid in.
How the mSOL fee is charged: it is deducted from the unstaked amount before the ticket is credited, and the Receive amount shown in the app already reflects it. Delayed Unstake of mSOL has a minimum of 1.0043 SOL; below that, use Instant Unstake instead.
How to Pay Less
On a short hold, Instant Unstake can cost more than you earned. A staked position earns roughly one 180th of its annual rate each epoch, which at recent rates is about 0.03% per epoch. An Instant Unstake at 0.10% to 0.40% therefore costs somewhere between 3 and 13 epochs of rewards, roughly one to four weeks. Which costs less depends on size: the delayed fee is flat and the instant cost is a percentage, so delayed wins on larger positions, while below roughly 1 to 3 SOL, depending on the spread, instant can be the cheaper of the two.
Use Delayed Unstake instead of instant. On Marinade Native and Select it costs a flat 0.003 SOL, including a Native position paid in a Recipe reward token. Instant Unstake costs money because someone is providing liquidity to pay you immediately rather than waiting an epoch.
On mSOL, check both before you assume Delayed is cheaper. Delayed Unstake of mSOL is a flat 0.2%, while Instant Unstake carries no Marinade fee and only the DEX spread. With deep liquidity the spread is usually under 0.2%, so Instant often returns more SOL. Compare the two Receive amounts in the app.
The 0.2% applies only to mSOL. If you stake with Marinade Native, including a Native position paid in a Recipe reward token, there is no cost to enter, and Delayed Unstake costs a flat 0.003 SOL taken from your wallet SOL balance. Existing Marinade Select positions pay the same flat 0.003 SOL.
Check the quote before confirming. The app shows the full execution price for an Instant Unstake, including any spread, before you approve.
Worked Examples
100 SOL in Marinade Native, Instant Unstake at 0.25%: roughly 0.25 SOL, so you receive about 99.75 SOL plus rewards.
100 SOL in Marinade Native, Delayed Unstake: you receive 100 SOL plus your rewards, and pay a flat 0.003 SOL from your wallet SOL balance.
100 SOL worth of mSOL, Delayed Unstake at 0.2%: roughly 0.2 SOL, so you receive about 99.8 SOL worth.
1,000 USDC in the vault earning 50 USDC of interest: the 5% performance fee is 2.50 USDC, taken from the interest only, never from your deposit. It is already reflected in the APY shown.
1 SOL in Marinade Native for six days, Instant Unstake at 0.25%: the fee is about 0.0025 SOL against roughly 0.0003 SOL of rewards, so you receive slightly less than you staked. On small positions held for a short time, the Instant Unstake fee outweighs the rewards.
1 SOL in Marinade Native for six days, Delayed Unstake: you receive your 1 SOL plus about 0.0003 SOL of rewards, and pay the same flat 0.003 SOL from your wallet SOL balance. The fee is flat, so on a position this small it outweighs the rewards.
Costs That Are Not Marinade's
Solana network fees. Standard per-transaction fees paid to the network. For Marinade Native, Marinade covers the rebalancing fees each epoch.
Market spreads. On an Instant Unstake, any market-maker spread or price impact is a market cost, not a Marinade fee. It is included in the quote you see.
Third-party fees. DEX, wallet, or exchange fees when routing through other venues.
Q: Is the 0.03 SOL I need in my wallet a fee?
A: No. It is a balance the app checks before it lets a claim or unstake through, not an amount anyone takes. The actual Solana network fee is well under 0.001 SOL and the rest stays in your wallet.
How Marinade Makes Money
Marinade does not take a cut of your staking rewards. There is no performance fee on Marinade Native, including a Native position paid in a Recipe reward token, nor on Marinade Select or Marinade Liquid.
Revenue comes from the validator side of the protocol rather than from stakers. Validators compete for stake allocation through the Stake Auction Marketplace, and Select validators contribute through their bond agreement. None of it is deducted from the rewards that reach your position.
Marinade aims to deliver stakers the Solana Staking Index (SSI), the market-wide benchmark for what SOL staking should return.
The USDC Earn Vault is the one exception, with a 5% performance fee on interest earned, as shown in the table above.
Revenue and Transparency
Protocol revenue is allocated by the Marinade DAO through approved governance proposals. Under MIP-22, 10% of protocol revenue goes to programmatic open-market MNDE buybacks, with the rest supporting protocol liquidity, ecosystem development, and operations.
Marinade DAO on Realms:
v2.realms.today/dao/899YG3yk4F66ZgbNWLHriZHTXSKk9e1kvsKEquW7L6Mo