It’s normal to see a small number of inactive validators when staking natively with Marinade.
Why do some validators show as inactive?
Marinade continuously monitors validator performance and rebalances stake each epoch to keep delegation healthy and well-distributed. As part of that process, Marinade can move (redelegate) up to 5% of stake per epoch.
Because stake is rotating and being reassigned in the background, it’s expected that a few validators in your set may appear “inactive” at any given time (often around a couple out of every 100).
Do inactive validators affect rewards?
On Solana, staking rewards depend on a validator’s vote credits / voting behavior (commonly used as a proxy for uptime). If a validator is not voting (for example, it’s delinquent or offline), it earns fewer vote credits and delegators can receive reduced rewards, or even zero rewards for that epoch.
How Marinade mitigates this
Diversification: Your stake is split across many validators, so no single one carries your whole position. A validator going offline affects only a small portion of your stake, not all of it.
Automatic rebalancing: Marinade evaluates performance and shifts stake over time to maintain optimal delegation.
Protected Staking Rewards (PSR): For Marinade stake that is covered by PSR, validators post a SOL bond designed to compensate delegators for losses caused by prolonged downtime and certain validator-side changes. Downtime is the part of an epoch when a validator is not voting. A validator with 99% uptime in an epoch has 1% downtime.
Up to 1% downtime is not covered. For example, a validator with 99.5% uptime in an epoch is within this 1%, so nothing is compensated.
Above 1% downtime, the validator bond covers 100% of the lost rewards, including that first 1%. For example, a validator with 90% uptime has 10% downtime, and the bond covers the full 10%.
Instant withdraw note
Depending on what you’re seeing in the UI, validators shown as inactive may be associated with stake that is not currently earning (or is being rotated), and it may be possible to withdraw instantly from that portion if needed.
We’re improving clarity
We know this can look confusing in the interface, and we’re working on making the validator status and stake movement easier to understand. In the meantime, seeing a few inactive validators is expected and is part of how Marinade keeps stake secure and well-managed.