Our top picks for the best liquid staking tools in the Solana ecosystem, ranked by community reviews and overall health scores.
Last updated: July 18, 2026
Liquid staking gives you the best of both worlds on Solana: earn staking rewards (6-9% APY) while keeping your capital usable in DeFi. Instead of locking SOL with a validator, you receive a liquid staking token (LST) like mSOL, jitoSOL, or bSOL that appreciates in value over time and can be used as collateral, traded, or deposited into yield strategies.
The liquid staking landscape on Solana has become sophisticated, with protocols differentiating on APY, MEV capture, validator selection strategy, DeFi integrations, and unstaking speed. We ranked each protocol on these factors plus security track record and total value locked.
You deposit SOL into a staking pool's smart contract and receive a liquid staking token — mSOL, jitoSOL, bSOL — that represents your share of the pool. The pool delegates the SOL across validators on your behalf.
Most Solana LSTs use a value-accrual (exchange-rate) model rather than rebasing: the token quantity stays the same, but each LST is redeemable for steadily more SOL as rewards compound. One jitoSOL is worth more SOL today than a month ago.
Because the LST is a normal SPL token, you can lend it on Kamino, LP it on Orca, or post it as collateral on Drift while it keeps earning the underlying staking yield — letting you stack DeFi yield on top of staking rewards.
To exit you either swap the LST back to SOL on a DEX or aggregator instantly (paying a small market spread), or redeem natively through the protocol, which unstakes over an epoch cooldown. Deep LST/SOL liquidity is what makes large exits cheap.
Base staking yield plus any MEV rewards distributed to holders. Jito's MEV integration gives jitoSOL a consistent edge on raw APY.
Where can you use the LST? Lending on Kamino, LP on Orca, collateral on Drift — more integrations means more yield-stacking options.
How the protocol distributes stake across validators. Concentrated stake in a few validators is bad for Solana's health and your risk profile.
Can you exit instantly via DEX liquidity, or do you need to wait for the unstake cooldown? Deep LST/SOL liquidity matters for large positions.
Swap between any Solana liquid staking token (LST) instantly — stake SOL, earn yield, and access unified LST liquidity
Solana's leading liquid restaking protocol with $300M+ TVL
World's first exchange-backed Solana liquid staking token developed with Sanctum
The infinite liquidity pool for all Solana liquid staking tokens
Premier Solana validator with laineSOL liquid staking and StakeWiz analytics
Liquid staking protocol maximizing Solana DeFi yields
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Institutional-grade liquid staking for Solana with LsSOL
Liquid staking and MEV protocol powering Solana validators
Community-driven liquid staking protocol with curated validator delegation
Liquid staking lets you stake SOL and receive a token (like mSOL or jitoSOL) that represents your staked position. This token earns staking rewards automatically (its value vs SOL increases over time) and can be used in DeFi — lending, LPs, or as collateral. You earn staking yield without locking your capital.
Jito's jitoSOL typically offers the highest APY because it captures MEV rewards on top of standard staking yield. Expect 7-9% APY depending on network conditions. Marinade's mSOL and Blaze's bSOL are close behind at 6-8%.
Liquid staking adds smart contract risk on top of standard staking. The major protocols (Marinade, Jito, Sanctum) are well-audited with billions in TVL and clean security records. The main risks are smart contract bugs and LST depeg events (temporary price deviation from underlying SOL value).
Sanctum is a liquid staking aggregator that unifies Solana's LST ecosystem. It provides instant LST-to-LST swaps, the Infinity pool for single-sided LST deposits, and validator LSTs that let any validator offer their own liquid staking token. It's become core infrastructure for Solana's staking ecosystem.
An LST can trade slightly below its underlying SOL value when exit liquidity is thin or markets panic, because instant DEX redemption competes with the slower native unstake. It usually mean-reverts as arbitrageurs unstake the discount away. The native redemption value stays intact — a depeg mainly hurts if you must exit instantly during the dip.
Yes — LSTs are widely accepted as collateral on Solana lending markets like Kamino and Drift, and in LP pools on Orca and Raydium. This 'yield stacking' is the core appeal of liquid staking: you keep earning staking rewards while the same token works in DeFi.
Choose native staking if you simply want yield with minimal smart-contract exposure and don't need the SOL liquid. Choose liquid staking if you want to use staked capital in DeFi, exit quickly via DEX liquidity, or capture MEV rewards (jitoSOL). Liquid staking adds smart-contract and depeg risk in exchange for that flexibility.
jitoSOL stakes through validators running the Jito-Solana client, which capture MEV (maximal extractable value) tips from block production and pass a share to LST holders on top of standard inflation rewards. That extra MEV layer is why jitoSOL's APY typically edges out LSTs without it.
For maximum yield, jitoSOL captures MEV rewards that other LSTs miss. For maximum decentralization, Marinade's mSOL distributes stake across 400+ validators. Sanctum ties the ecosystem together by making all LSTs interchangeable. Most DeFi-active users hold a mix of LSTs to diversify risk and maximize yield opportunities across protocols.