Less than 4% of SOL is liquid staked. Why? And what can we do about it?

We thought stake pools would be “winner-take-all”. Everyone jostled to be Lido on Ethereum. But the landscape just isn’t the same. Staking on Solana is fundamentally different, and liquid staking tokens (LSTs) have little moat.

The “one SOL to rule them all” narrative is fundamentally flawed. We must work together, not fight amongst ourselves for the scraps.

The only way we can get from 4% to 100%. is for us to radically rethink what an LST can be. LSTs are not just stake pools. On Solana there can be thousands, if not millions, of different LSTs, all serving different use-cases. We must embrace a multi-LST future.

We need more stake pools, all with meaningfully different strategies. $jitoSOL is an important cog in the adoption of Jito's MEV client. $LST doubles marginfi's distribution surface area, and is the easy in-house choice for people who trust their brand. Solblaze runs a "pure" stake pool with incredible user loyalty. And many more are coming.

We must embrace single-validator LSTs. Single-validator stake pools enable liquid staking with zero fees, no counterparty, and 100% capital efficiency.

We need even crazier ideas. What if we gave everyone on Solana their own LST ($TOLYSOL, $MEOWSOL, $MERTSOL)? People would buy and hold these “social LSTs” to direct staking returns to their favourite folks; a Web3 Patreon of sorts.