Staking SOL earns you around 7–8% APY, but standard staking locks your SOL for a full epoch (~2.5 days) to unstake. Liquid staking solves this: you stake SOL and receive a liquid token (LST) that earns rewards automatically while remaining tradeable.
How Liquid Staking Works
When you deposit SOL into a liquid staking protocol:
- Your SOL is delegated to a validator (or a set of validators)
- You receive a liquid token — mSOL, jitoSOL, bSOL, etc. — representing your staked position
- The LST price increases relative to SOL over time as staking rewards accumulate
- To exit, you either swap the LST back to SOL on a DEX (instant) or unstake through the protocol (2.5-day delay)
The key insight: the LST itself appreciates. 1 mSOL becomes worth slightly more than 1 SOL after a month, more after a year. You don't receive separate reward payments — the value is baked into the token price.
The Main Solana LSTs
mSOL (Marinade Finance) — The original Solana LST. Marinade delegates to 100+ validators, optimizing for decentralization and yield. Clean DeFi integrations across Solana.
jitoSOL (Jito) — Stakes with MEV-capturing validators. Part of the staking yield comes from MEV (maximal extractable value) — bots pay validators for transaction ordering priority, and jitoSOL holders get a cut. Typically slightly higher yield than mSOL.
bSOL (BlazeStake) — Community-focused, delegates to high-performance validators. Competitive yield with strong DeFi integrations.
LST (Sanctum) — Sanctum is an LST liquidity layer that lets any validator issue their own LST and provides deep swap liquidity between them.
Returns: What to Expect
| LST | Approximate APY | MEV Yield | |-----|----------------|-----------| | mSOL | 7.2% | No | | jitoSOL | 7.8% | Yes | | bSOL | 7.4% | No | | Base staking | 7.0% | No |
Rates fluctuate with network activity. During high-activity periods, jitoSOL's MEV yield premium increases.
Using LSTs in DeFi
The real advantage of liquid staking is what you can do with the LST:
Provide liquidity — Add mSOL/SOL to Orca or Raydium pools to earn trading fees on top of staking yield. Combined returns can reach 12–20% APY.
Collateral — Use mSOL as collateral on lending protocols like Marginfi or Kamino to borrow USDC without unstaking.
Swap freely — Trade in and out of your staked position instantly on Jupiter without waiting for unstaking.
Liquid Staking vs Productive Staking
Standard liquid staking earns yield from validator rewards and MEV. Productive staking goes further — your stake contributes to real economic activity (like AI inference) and earns yield from that revenue, not just from network inflation.
SovereignSwap's $SOVAI staking model is designed around productive staking: swap fees collected by the platform route to stakers as real revenue, separate from token emissions.
Read about $SOVAI productive staking →
Risks to Know
Smart contract risk — LST protocols have been audited, but smart contracts can have bugs. The major protocols (Marinade, Jito) have clean track records.
Validator slashing — If validators misbehave, they can be slashed. In practice, Solana slashing is rare and protocols spread stake across many validators.
LST depeg — During market stress, LSTs can trade briefly below their SOL value on DEXes. This is typically a short-term liquidity event, not a fundamental issue.
Concentration risk — If you're using an LST as collateral on a lending protocol, you have both smart contract risk and liquidation risk.
Getting Started
- Get SOL via SovereignSwap or a CEX
- Go to marinade.finance or jito.network
- Deposit SOL → receive mSOL or jitoSOL
- Hold for passive yield, or use in DeFi for additional returns