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 | Delayed unstake: free. Instant unstake: 0.10% to 0.40%, set by the market | None |
Marinade Select | None | Delayed unstake: free. Instant unstake: 0.10% to 0.40%, set by the market | None |
Marinade Recipes (Custom Reward Tokens) | None | Delayed unstake: free. Instant unstake: 0.10% to 0.40%, set by the market | None |
Marinade Liquid (mSOL) | None | Delayed unstake: 0.2%, minimum 1.0043 SOL. 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 |
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. If you have been staked for less than that and you do not need the SOL immediately, delayed unstake leaves you ahead.
Use delayed unstake instead of instant. On Marinade Native, Select, and Recipes it is completely free. Instant unstake costs money because someone is providing liquidity to pay you immediately rather than waiting an epoch.
The 0.2% applies only to mSOL. If you stake with Marinade Native, Select, or Recipes, there is no cost to enter or exit at all when using delayed unstake.
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, delayed unstake: you receive 100 SOL plus your rewards. No fee.
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 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, delayed unstake: you receive your 1 SOL plus about 0.0003 SOL of rewards. No fee.
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.
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.
How Marinade Makes Money
Marinade does not take a cut of your staking rewards. There is no performance fee on Marinade Native, Marinade Select, Custom Reward Tokens, 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. See What Is the Solana Staking Rate?
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. Following MIP-17, the DAO shifted focus from automatic MNDE buybacks toward protocol liquidity, stability, and long-term growth.