Solana staking comes with a lot of vocabulary. Here is what the terms you will see on our site and in the app actually mean.
APY
The annual percentage yield: what your stake earns over a year, expressed as a percentage, including the effect of rewards compounding. Marinade does not pay a fixed APY. See What APY Does Marinade Pay?
Atomic exchange
A swap that happens in a single transaction: either every part of it succeeds, or none of it does. You cannot end up half-way through with your funds in limbo.
Commission
The cut a validator takes from the staking rewards it earns before passing the rest to its delegators.
Commission rugging
When a validator suddenly raises its commission to capture rewards that would have gone to stakers. Marinade monitors for this and moves stake away from validators that do it.
DCA (dollar cost averaging)
Buying a fixed amount of something at regular intervals rather than all at once, to smooth out the price you pay. With Marinade Recipes, your staking rewards arrive steadily in a token of your choice, which has a similar effect.
Delayed Unstake
One of Marinade's two unstake modes. Your SOL is returned about one epoch after you start it, and you then claim it in the app. On Marinade Native and Marinade Select it costs a flat 0.003 SOL, charged from your wallet's SOL balance rather than deducted from the amount you unstake, and it works at any position size. On mSOL it costs 0.2% and has a minimum of 1.0043 SOL. See Delayed Unstake on Marinade
Delegation
Assigning your stake to a validator so it helps secure the network and earns rewards. Delegating does not transfer ownership. Your SOL stays yours.
Epoch
Solana's reward cycle, roughly a day and a half. Staking rewards are paid out at the end of each epoch, and most staking timings are measured in epochs rather than days.
Instant Unstake
One of Marinade's two unstake modes. It returns SOL to your wallet straight away at a market price quoted by liquidity providers, typically costing 0.10% to 0.40% on Marinade Native and Marinade Select. On native stake it needs a position of 1 SOL or more; below that, use Delayed Unstake. mSOL has no minimum, so mSOL below the Delayed Unstake minimum uses Instant Unstake. See Instant Unstake on Marinade
KYB-verified (Know Your Business)
A validator operator whose legal identity and business details have been verified, rather than being anonymous. Marinade Select validators are KYB-verified.
Liquidity provider
A market maker that buys your staked position for SOL when you use Instant Unstake, so you do not have to wait for the epoch to end. The price it quotes is what sets the amount you receive.
LST (liquid staking token)
A token that represents staked SOL and can be moved or traded while the underlying SOL stays staked. mSOL is Marinade's LST.
MEV (maximal extractable value)
Extra value validators can capture from the order in which transactions are placed in a block. Some of it is legitimate revenue that gets shared with stakers, and Marinade factors it into validator selection. Some of it is harmful to ordinary users, such as front-running and sandwiching, which is why Marinade Select validators commit to not doing it.
mSOL
Marinade's liquid staking token. Instead of new tokens appearing in your wallet, each mSOL gradually becomes worth more SOL as rewards accrue. See mSOL Explained: Staking Made Liquid
Protected Staking Rewards (PSR)
A system where validators post a SOL bond that can compensate stakers for rewards lost to validator downtime or unexpected commission changes. See What Happens to My Rewards If a Validator Goes Down?
Rent
The SOL Solana requires an account to hold in order to stay open. A stake account has to keep this balance, which is part of why Marinade Native has a minimum of 1.0046 SOL. It is not a fee. The SOL stays in the account and comes back to you when the account is closed.
Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM)
Marinade's system where validators compete for stake by bidding, so that stake goes to the validators offering the most back to stakers.
Slashing
A network-level penalty that takes a portion of stake from validators that misbehave. Solana does not have slashing today, though it has been proposed.
Stake account
The on-chain account that holds your staked SOL. With Marinade Native, these are owned by your own wallet.
TVL (total value locked)
The total value of assets held in a protocol. Used as a rough measure of size.
Unstake ticket
The on-chain record created when you start a Delayed Unstake. It holds your claim on the SOL until the epoch ends, and you then claim it in the app. If a claim transaction fails, the ticket is not used up and you can claim again.
Vote credits
What a validator earns for voting correctly on Solana. Rewards depend on them, so a validator that stops voting earns less and its delegators earn less that epoch.