Staking MNDE is what gives you voting power in Marinade governance. It is also one of the two conditions for the MNDE Staking Rewards Program introduced by MIP-22. See The MNDE Token.
To take part in Marinade governance, you need to stake your MNDE. Follow these steps:
Visit Marinade’s Governance Page.
Connect your wallet where you hold MNDE tokens.
Click “Start staking MNDE.”
The page should recognize the amount of MNDE available in your wallet.
Enter the amount you wish to stake.
Keep in mind that unstaking takes 30 days.
If the network is busy, set a higher priority fee to help the transaction go through. Click your wallet address with the cog icon at the top right, open Settings, and set Priority fee to High.
Click “Stake” and approve the transaction in your wallet.
Make sure you have at least 0.03 SOL in your wallet to cover the transaction fee.
Wait for confirmation.
You’ll see a “Successfully Staked” message once complete.
Check your active position on the page.
If You Lock Directly on Realms
The governance page above is the supported route and handles this for you. If you go to Marinade’s Realms page directly, which is where the proposal list and governance stats link to, one thing matters more than anything else.
Realms offers both Deposit and Lock Tokens. Use Lock Tokens.
A plain Deposit puts your MNDE into the DAO’s community token account but produces no voting power, so you will not be able to vote and the stake will not count toward governance participation. This is the most common and most expensive mistake when locking on Realms.
When you lock, you also set the lock duration. Unlocking later starts the same 30-day period as the governance page.
Marinade’s Realms page: v2.realms.today/dao/899YG3yk4F66ZgbNWLHriZHTXSKk9e1kvsKEquW7L6Mo
Realms is a third-party interface that Marinade does not operate, and its layout can change without notice. If the buttons do not match what is described here, use the Governance Page instead.
To unstake, see Unstake MNDE on Governance Page.