The Complete Guide to Solana Liquid Staking

Liquid staking lets you earn SOL staking rewards without giving up access to your capital, by issuing you a tradeable token in place of locked, unbonding SOL. It solves a specific problem with native staking: your stake is otherwise locked for an unbonding period and unusable anywhere else in DeFi while staked. Liquid staking protocols solve this by staking your SOL on your behalf and issuing you a liquid token — an LST — representing your position, which you can trade, hold as collateral, or provide as liquidity while the underlying SOL keeps earning staking rewards.

The important choice is not simply “which LST pays the most?” Compare the token’s issuer, validator policy, redemption path, liquidity, and the DeFi markets that accept it. If you plan to borrow against the token, read our Solana LST collateral and lending guide before depositing.

The Solana LST landscape

Solana has many LSTs, but they do not all solve the same problem. Some are single-issuer stake-pool tokens. Others aggregate liquidity across many LSTs, and newer tokens may be tied to a specific ecosystem or validator set.

Model	Examples	Main decision
Issuer stake-pool LST	jitoSOL, mSOL, bSOL	Validator selection, reward source, redemption, and liquidity
Shared LST liquidity	Sanctum Infinity and connected LSTs	Which underlying token you hold, pool composition, and route liquidity
Ecosystem-specific LST	BulkSOL and other newer tokens	Track record, redemption terms, integrations, and available evidence

BulkSOL is an emerging Solana LST associated with BULK. BULK’s official brand page confirms the token identity, but its public developer docs reviewed on September 26, 2026 do not provide a complete public specification for staking, redemption, fees, or lending support. Treat those fields as UNKNOWN until the live product or primary documentation confirms them.

Sanctum’s official Explore directory showed 237 LSTs on September 26, 2026. Its featured list included INF, fwdSOL, rkuSOL, bbSOL, gtSOL, BulkSOL, dfdvSOL, mpSOL, bpSOL, JupSOL, and bonkSOL. The directory’s APYs are live snapshots, so use it to discover tokens—not as a permanent ranking or a promise of future yield. Our ranked Solana LST directory records the dated stake-value snapshot and explains how to use it.

What the primary documentation establishes

• JitoSOL: Jito’s documentation describes jitoSOL as a liquid token whose economics combine staking rewards with MEV rewards from Jito’s validator software.
• mSOL: Marinade’s documentation describes mSOL as the liquid staking token received when SOL is staked through Marinade and delegated according to Marinade’s validator-selection logic.
• Sanctum Infinity: Sanctum’s documentation describes Infinity as shared liquidity infrastructure for swaps among SOL and many Solana LSTs, with staking rewards and swap fees as distinct economic inputs.

Those primary sources establish the product mechanics and reward/liquidity design. They do not establish a permanent yield winner, current liquidity depth, collateral eligibility, or a risk-free outcome; verify those changing decision fields in the live venue before acting.

The main protocols

Jito issues jitoSOL and is notable for its validator client capturing and redistributing MEV rewards on top of standard staking yield.

Marinade issues mSOL and was one of the original Solana liquid staking protocols, with a long-standing focus on validator decentralization.

Sanctum takes a different approach — its Infinity product is shared liquidity infrastructure for many different LSTs, addressing liquidity fragmentation across smaller, validator-specific tokens. Sanctum is not one universal LST issuer, so the underlying token still matters.

BlazeStake issues bSOL with a delegation strategy favoring smaller, independent validators.

How to choose between LSTs

• Validator strategy. Concentrated delegation to a few large validators versus broad distribution across many affects both your yield and the network’s overall decentralization.
• Liquidity depth. An LST you can’t easily trade or use as collateral elsewhere loses much of the point of liquid staking versus just staking natively.
• Extra yield sources. Some LSTs (notably jitoSOL) include MEV rewards on top of base staking yield; understand where your yield is actually coming from.
• Track record. Longer-running protocols have been tested through more market conditions.

The main risks

Depeg risk — an LST can trade below its fair value relative to SOL during periods of high redemption demand or market stress. See our dedicated depeg risk guide.

Validator and slashing risk — while the protocol manages validator selection for you, poor validator performance or (rarely) slashing events can still affect returns; this risk is managed but not eliminated by the protocol layer.

Smart contract risk — same as any DeFi protocol holding assets on your behalf.

Using an LST as collateral elsewhere compounds risk — if you deposit an LST into a lending protocol as collateral, a depeg event affects both the LST’s value and your liquidation risk on the lending position simultaneously.

Getting started

If you’re new to liquid staking, our practical walkthrough of staking SOL via Jito covers the mechanics step by step. For a venue choice, use the best Solana liquid-staking shortlist. Whichever protocol you choose, understand that you’re trading a small amount of protocol and validator-selection risk for the flexibility of a liquid, usable token — a reasonable trade for many users, but not a risk-free one.