For what Marinade Borrow is and how the design works, start with the Marinade Borrow Overview. This article covers the mechanics of opening, watching, and closing a position.
Borrow is available to everyone. There is no waitlist, beta access, or approval step. If you have SOL, mSOL, or an existing staking position, you can open a position today.
Opening a Position
Go to app.marinade.finance and connect your wallet.
Open Borrow from the main navigation, then click the Borrow button. On the panel that opens, choose Start a loan.
Pick what you want to borrow, SOL or USDC. Each shows its own borrow APY.
Enter how much you want to borrow, not how much to deposit. Marinade works backwards from the loan. Safe fills in a conservative amount, Max fills in the most you can take.
Review the summary: your collateral, starting loan-to-value, the market and its borrow APY, and your Net APY. To see the liquidation price and the liquidation LTV, tap the pencil next to Loan-to-value. That panel also lets you drag your LTV between the minimum and maximum for this loan.
On What backs your loan, check which of your holdings will be converted to mSOL as collateral. Nothing is borrowed at this point.
Review transaction, then confirm. Borrowing takes two or three wallet signatures depending on whether idle SOL has to be converted, so expect more than one prompt. Marinade's fee is 0%.
You can also start a loan against a position you already hold. On Portfolio, open the ⋯ menu on a Marinade Native, Marinade Select or mSOL row and choose Borrow.
Borrow less than the maximum. Opening at the maximum LTV leaves no room for interest to accrue before you are at risk. The app shows a warning when you are opening a position with little margin.
Why More Collateral Was Used Than Expected
Solana stake accounts can't be split into arbitrarily small pieces: each side of a split must be at least 1 SOL. When Marinade splits a stake account for collateral, both the portion it takes and the portion left in your account have to clear that 1 SOL minimum.
Two different things can happen:
Your loan needs less than 1 SOL from the account: Marinade takes a full 1 SOL as collateral, slightly more than the loan strictly requires.
Taking exactly what's needed would leave less than 1 SOL behind: Marinade uses the entire stake account as collateral instead, which can be a larger jump than the first case. The app tells you when this applies.
In both cases, the extra stays yours, keeps earning as mSOL, and you can reclaim it once the loan is repaid.
Finding Your Open Position
Go to app.marinade.finance and connect the wallet that opened the loan.
Open Portfolio and stay on the Positions tab.
Your loan appears under Borrow positions, a separate table below Earn positions, showing the market, net value, collateral, debt, net APY, LTV and earned.
Open the Manage dropdown on that row. It holds Borrow, Repay, Withdraw and Deposit. The repay screen shows your debt, collateral and LTV again before you commit to anything.
Loans opened directly on Kamino or Jupiter Lend with the same wallet show up in the app too. For SOL or USDC loans backed by mSOL, you get the same Borrow, Repay, Withdraw and Deposit actions. Loans with other collateral are visible only for now, so manage those on the venue where you opened them.
If the row is missing or the numbers do not load, positions are read from the chain across both lending venues, so give it a moment. If it is still empty after a refresh and reconnecting your wallet, contact support with your wallet address and a screenshot. A display problem does not affect your loan.
Watching Your LTV
LTV is debt divided by collateral. It is the only number that decides whether you get liquidated.
Borrowing SOL against mSOL: the two move together in price, so LTV creeps up only through accrued interest. Checking every few weeks is enough.
Borrowing a stablecoin: a fall in SOL's price raises your LTV directly and quickly. Check often, and keep a wide buffer. A new loan opened at the default LTV has room for SOL to drop about 50% before liquidation, less if you raised the LTV yourself or borrowed close to your maximum. Your exact liquidation price is on your position screen.
Check Net APY as well as LTV. Net APY is shown live on your position row and moves with the venue's borrow APY, so it can differ from the figure you saw when you opened the position, including turning negative.
If Your LTV Is Getting Close to the Threshold
You have two levers, both in the Manage dropdown on your Borrow position row, and either works at any time:
Repay part of the debt. This lowers LTV immediately.
Deposit more collateral. This lowers LTV without needing the borrowed funds back.
If your LTV is too high to borrow more, the app blocks the action and names these same two levers. Act before the threshold, not at it. If LTV crosses it, part of your collateral is sold to repay the debt, usually with a penalty, and that is not reversible.
Every Borrow action needs SOL in your wallet for network fees. Opening, borrowing, repaying and withdrawing are all blocked if your available SOL is too low. The app holds back 0.04 SOL for fees, and closing a position takes several transactions rather than one, so if your balance is at or near that figure top up with a little headroom before you start. This is higher than the roughly 0.03 SOL needed for an ordinary stake or unstake.
Closing a Position
Repay the full debt whenever you like. There is no schedule and no fixed term. Repaying reduces your debt, but it does not automatically return your collateral: once repaid, choose Withdraw from the same Manage dropdown to get your collateral back in your wallet as mSOL. Fully repaying and withdrawing closes the position.
Note that collateral comes back as mSOL even if you started from a Native position, so returning to Native staking is a separate step.
FAQ
Q: Do I need access or an invite?
A: No. Borrow is generally available to all users.
Q: Do I keep earning staking rewards?
A: Yes, for the entire time the loan is open. Your collateral is mSOL and it keeps earning.
Q: My wallet asked me to sign three times. Is that normal?
A: Yes. Opening a position takes two or three signatures: converting stake to mSOL, converting idle SOL to mSOL if any is being used, and the deposit-and-borrow itself. The confirmation screen lists exactly which steps apply to your loan before you start.
Q: My position is slow to appear after opening it.
A: Positions are read from the chain across both lending venues, so rows fill in as each venue responds. A freshly opened position is recognised immediately, but give the full view a moment to load.
Q: I can see my Kamino or Jupiter Lend loan in Marinade but cannot manage it. Why?
A: Only SOL or USDC loans backed by mSOL can be managed from Marinade. Loans with other collateral are shown so all your borrowing sits in one place, but for now you manage them on the venue where you opened them.
Q: Can I be liquidated if the price never moves?
A: Yes, eventually. Interest accrual alone raises LTV over time. It is slow when borrowing SOL against mSOL, but it is not zero.
Q: Can I borrow without touching my Native position?
A: Yes, if your idle mSOL and external stake accounts cover the loan. Collateral is drawn in this order: idle mSOL, external stake accounts, your Marinade staking positions, then idle SOL in your wallet, and only the amount your loan needs is converted. Idle SOL comes last, so a Native position is used before it. The What backs your loan screen shows exactly which of your holdings will be used before you commit to anything, so check there if you want to keep a particular position intact.
Q: Where do I see my exact parameters?
A: On your position screen in the app. LTV, liquidation threshold, and both APYs are shown live for your specific market.
Q: Why did my loan go to Kamino (or Jupiter Lend) instead of the other one?
A: When you open a loan, Marinade picks the venue with the best rate that can actually fill your amount at that moment. A venue with a better rate but too little available to lend is skipped, so the venue can differ from one loan to the next as market liquidity changes. The market and its borrow APY are shown in the summary before you confirm, and on your position row afterwards.
Q: My Marinade Native position is smaller since I borrowed. Where did the rest go?
A: It became your collateral. Opening a loan converts part of your stake to mSOL, and that mSOL is what backs the loan, so your Native row shows a lower amount than before. Nothing left your wallet. On Portfolio, look at both Earn positions and Borrow positions: the collateral appears under the Borrow position, and the two together account for what you had. Repaying the loan and withdrawing returns the collateral to you as mSOL.
Q: My wallet says the borrow transaction is malicious. Is it safe?
A: If you started the borrow yourself on app.marinade.finance, yes. Opening a position converts stake into mSOL collateral, which changes the authority on a stake account, and some wallets flag every transaction of that shape as suspicious regardless of what it does. The same warning appears on Instant Unstake, for the same reason. Marinade never transfers more than the amount you requested. Jupiter wallet is the one that currently shows this and we are in touch with their team to get these addresses recognised. Check that you are on app.marinade.finance and that the amounts match what the app showed you before approving. If you did not start the transaction, cancel it.
Q: I repaid my loan and got mSOL back. How do I return to Marinade Native?
A: There is no automatic conversion, so you do it in two steps: unstake the mSOL, then stake the SOL again with Marinade Native. Expect about one epoch of reduced earning across the switch. See Can I Switch From Marinade Native to mSOL? for the same process in the other direction.
Q: My wallet says the transaction may fail when I try to repay.
A: Most often this means the wallet does not have enough available SOL. Every Borrow action is blocked when it cannot cover fees, repaying takes several transactions, and the app holds back 0.04 SOL for network fees, so top up above that and try again. If it still fails after topping up, contact support with your wallet address and a screenshot of the error.