Marinade Labs Launches 'Marinade Select' – a New Staking Marketplace Built for Institutional Clients

Marinade Labs announced the launch of Marinade Select today, May 21 – a new staking marketplace built for institutional clients interested in staking on the Solana network.

DeFi protocol Marinade Labs announced the launch of Marinade Select, a new staking marketplace designed for institutional clients interested in staking on the Solana network.

The platform, a spinoff of the broader Marinade protocol, will offer a streamlined entryway into staking via a curated group of validators and a focused product roadmap.

DeFi protocol announced the launch of , a new staking marketplace built for institutional clients interested in staking on the Solana network.

The team behind Marinade - Solana’s sixth-largest protocol with $1.8 billion in total value locked (TVL) - said the platform will offer institutional investors a more streamlined entryway into staking via a curated group of validators, according to a press release viewed by .

Unlike Marinade’s open validator model, Marinade Select is designed for institutional clients in particular, with a focus on security and compliance. The new product features a group of 30 to 40 validators to “maintain decentralization and network diversity.” The validators are chosen based on performance and alignment with compliance standards.

“All validators will be known legal entities and go through KYC onboarding,” Hadley Stern, Chief Commercial Officer at Marinade Labs, told . “It’s part of a comprehensive compliance program, appealing to institutions seeking greater assurance around compliance, performance, and security.”

The move comes amid broader concerns about increasing centralization across blockchain networks, particularly as more institutional players enter the space.

“The institutional market is moving to single big validators – similar to Coinbase being the only custodian for Bitcoin ETFs, this is bad for Solana decentralization,” Stern said.

Through a non-custodial framework, institutional stakers can use Marinade Select to retain control over their SOL while new delegations are distributed across the validator set.

“Marinade Select helps the underlying network maintain decentralization and allows institutions to participate in securing the Solana network by easily delegating to multiple validators at once,” Repetný said. “This makes the Solana ecosystem more resilient as opposed to centralized exchange staking, which is often the default on other chains."

Solana is also notable for its ability to process thousands of transactions per second at a fraction of a penny, Repetný explained. Currently SOL is trading ner $169, up 2% today and 22% this month.

Most recently, Marinade integrated with digital asset trust company BitGo to expand its Solana staking offerings to institutions.