If you are staking with Marinade for the first time and you are not planning to use DeFi, choose Marinade Native. That is the short answer.
Here is the longer one.
Marinade Native | Marinade Liquid (mSOL) | |
Where your SOL sits | Stake accounts owned by your own wallet | The Marinade stake pool |
Smart contract holds your SOL | No. A Marinade program holds only the stake authority | Yes |
What you hold | Nothing new. Your stake accounts | mSOL, a token in your wallet |
Minimum to stake | 1.0046 SOL | 1.0023 SOL |
Cost to enter | None | None |
Instant Unstake | 0.10% to 0.40%, set by the market | No Marinade fee, but it is a DEX swap so price impact applies |
Delayed Unstake | A flat 0.003 SOL, charged from your wallet SOL, not from the amount you unstake. About 1 epoch | 0.2%, about 1 epoch |
Usable in DeFi | No | Yes |
Works with locked SOL | Yes | No |
Rewards paid in | SOL, compounding into your stake | Reflected in your mSOL becoming worth more SOL |
Can change reward token | Yes, via Marinade Recipes | No |
Solana governance voting | You vote your own stake directly, including against Marinade if you choose. If you do nothing, your validator votes on your behalf. | Marinade casts one pooled vote for the whole stake pool. You can share your view in governance discussions, and the team factors community sentiment into how the pool votes. |
What is the real difference?
With Marinade Native, your SOL never leaves accounts you own. Marinade's only power is to choose which validators it is delegated to. A Marinade program is in the path, but it holds only the stake authority: it cannot hold or move your SOL, and you keep the withdraw authority.
With Marinade Liquid, your SOL goes into the Marinade stake pool and you receive mSOL in return. mSOL is a normal Solana token, so you can trade it, lend it, or use it as collateral while the underlying SOL keeps earning. The tradeoff is that your position now depends on the stake pool program.
Which one earns more?
Both stake to the same validator set, so neither is structurally higher earning. Marinade does not take a performance fee on either.
You may still see two different APY numbers in the app, because the two are measured differently:
mSOL APY is derived from how the mSOL/SOL exchange rate has moved over a recent rolling window. It is backward-looking and includes the pool's liquid reserve.
Marinade Native APY is computed from the rewards actually landing in stake accounts, and it counts stake that is mid-rebalance in the denominator, which pulls the figure down slightly on purpose.
Different methods, so the two numbers are not directly comparable. A gap between them is not a gap in what you earn.
The real cost difference is on the way out: Delayed Unstake costs a flat 0.003 SOL on Native, charged from your wallet's SOL balance rather than deducted from the amount you unstake, and 0.2% on mSOL.
So why would I pick mSOL?
Because you want your staked SOL to do something else at the same time. Lending it, providing liquidity, using it as collateral, or simply being able to sell the position instantly on a DEX rather than waiting an epoch.
If none of that is on your list, mSOL adds a dependency without giving you anything you will use.
I have locked or vesting SOL. Does that change things?
Yes. Locked SOL cannot be liquid staked, because liquid staking requires the SOL to move into the stake pool and a lockup exists specifically to prevent that. Locked SOL can be staked with Marinade Native.
Can I change my mind later?
Yes, but it is not a one-click switch. There is no in-place conversion between Native and mSOL: you unstake one and stake the other. Expect roughly one epoch of reduced earning across the move.
What about Marinade Select and Marinade Recipes?
Both are variations on Native rather than separate choices about custody.
Marinade Recipes stakes the same way as Native, to a specific Marinade validator, with your rewards paid in a token of your choice instead of SOL. See What Are Marinade Recipes?
Marinade Select stakes the same way as Native, to a smaller vetted validator set. It is not currently available to stake to, and existing Select positions are unaffected. See What Is Marinade Select?