Solana’s leading liquid staking provider, Marinade Finance, plans to roll out an updated blacklist policy. The protocol aims to target validators that deliberately slow block times to exploit MEV (Maximal Extractable Value). It believes the initiative will make the Solana blockchain faster.
Marinade to Update Blacklist Policy
The move comes after on-chain data revealed that over 30 validators took longer than 450ms to validate blocks in two consecutive epochs. Notably, the issue occurred between epochs 780 and 824, resulting in delays and undermining protocol fairness.
According to an official statement from Marinade via X, the new policy will flag validators acting against the network’s health and redistribute stakeholder funds to honest operators. As part of the penalty, all associated re-delegation costs are charged to the offenders’ own bonded collateral.
To curb concerns that may arise due to the development, Marinade pledged that user rewards remain intact during the process. Following the news, its governance token, MNDE, briefly rose by over 15% according to data from the aggregator platform, CoinMarketCap.
Interestingly, the policy rollout builds on Marinade’s earlier governance proposals, which included creating a public oversight committee, reopening the public mempool, and funding MEV research efforts.
Marinade Plans to do More
Moments after the blacklist policy announcement, the liquid stake protocol updated its community about an upcoming proposal (MIP-13). It plans to allocate 50% of protocol performance fees to monthly buybacks of MNDE beginning September 2025.
Another exciting news for its community is that if the proposal passes, the protocol will launch its Active Staking Rewards (ASR) program. It plans to allocate 25 million MNDE tokens ($2.5 million) to governance participants voting throughout 2025. The move mirrors that of Solana’s Jupiter, which rewards DAO and platform participation quarterly and annually, respectively.
Another community-led proposal suggests a one-time burning of 10% of the MNDE supply (100 million tokens). If approved, it would permanently reduce maximum supply to 900 million, further tightening supply alongside recurring buybacks and incentives.
Proposals Amid Favourable Regulations
Marinade’s proposals come on the heels of a landmark SEC staff statement clarifying that liquid staking activities and related tokens (LSTs) are not securities under U.S. federal law, provided they carry no investment contract characteristics.
Meanwhile, the total market capitalization of liquid stake tokens on Solana last month neared $8 billion. Data from Blockworks, a blockchain analytics platform, reveals jitoSOL topped the list, followed by bnSOL with a $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion market valuation, respectively. The metrics show there has been a surge in the adoption of LSTs on Solana.
