A Comprehensive Analysis of the Current Development of Solana Liquid Staking: The Top Three LST Protocols Hold 72% of the Market, Jito's Momentum is Strong with Impressive Data

Author: Nancy, PANews

Liquid staking is a popular topic in Ethereum and has once shown a monopolistic oligopoly pattern. However, recently, the offensive momentum in the Solana liquid staking sector is strong, especially with Jito performing a remarkable overtaking. This article by PANews analyzes the current development status of Solana in the liquid staking sector from a data perspective (all data in this article is as of July 30).

Liquid staking becomes the main force for TVL growth, with the top three LST tokens accounting for over 72% of market cap

Recently, Solana has attracted attention due to multiple data hitting new highs. In addition to the MEME craze, liquid staking is also becoming a strong narrative. According to DeFiLlama data, in the past month, Solana's TVL surged from $4.84 billion to $5.45 billion, an increase of over 12.6%. The main contributors are the top three: Jito, Marinade, and Kamino, all from the liquid staking sector.

Currently, the market landscape of Solana's liquid staking tokens has undergone a transformation. Dune data shows that in the early development stage, the market was mainly dominated by Marinade's mSOL, Lido's stSOL, and Sanctum's scnSOL. Now, the Solana liquid staking sector has 27 related protocols, with the top three, Jito, Marinade, and Jupiter, being the "traffic leaders," collectively holding nearly 72.1% of the market share.

Among them, Jito's LST token jitoSOL has a market cap of $2.2 billion, accounting for 46% of the total, ranking first. The official website shows that jitoSOL's APR is 7.68%, with over 105,000 stakers and 218 validators.

Jito's other data performances are also quite impressive. DeFiLlama data shows that Jito's TVL exceeds $2.17 billion, with a nearly 36.6% increase in the last 30 days, making it the only protocol on Solana with a total locked amount exceeding $2 billion. In terms of fee revenue, Jito's transaction fees reached $32.12 million, with revenue of $12.8 million, ranking second only to Raydium; Jito's daily fee revenue even surpassed Lido, ranking first among all protocols, exceeding Uniswap, Ethereum, and others. Artemis data shows that in terms of trading activity, Jito's total transaction count exceeds 54.78 million, ranking fourth among all Solana DeFi protocols, but Jito's daily active addresses are only 1,347, far less than Solana's overall 2.4 million daily active addresses.

In recent months, Jito has also been very active in the market, including the Jito Foundation announcing the launch of a new infrastructure platform, Jito Restaking, supporting mixed staking, re-staking, LRT modules, and Active Validation Services (AVS); the Jito DAO's new proposal plans to use 7.5 million JTO tokens for liquidity mining, which accounts for 3.1% of the 240 million JTO held in the DAO's treasury, and 0.75% of the total JTO supply, etc.;

Following closely is Marinade's LST token mSOL, with a market cap exceeding $800 million and a market share of 17.2%. Official data shows that mSOL's APR is 7.33%, with over 147,000 stakers. Meanwhile, DeFiLlama data shows that Marinade's TVL reached $1.45 billion, up about 26.2% in the past month. Artemis data shows that Marinade's total transaction count exceeds 2.544 million, with fees of $329,000 and daily active addresses of 12,573. In recent months, Marinade has taken multiple measures to enhance its token liquidity, including a Marinade DAO proposal to allocate 50 million MNDE to Marinade Earn Season 3 to increase the profitability of mSOL pools and other SOL LSTs, thereby deepening mSOL liquidity in DeFi, launching a staking auction market to improve yields and promote Solana's decentralization, and a proposal to increase MNDE liquidity on CEXs by providing a budget of 26 million MNDE tokens to three market makers, etc.

Jupiter's jupSOL was launched in April this year, achieving a market cap of nearly $450 million and a market share of 9.39%. This LST token allows earning staking rewards from Jupiter validators and 100% MEV rebates, and the Jupiter team has also entrusted 100,000 SOL to provide high yields. DeFiLlama data shows that Jupiter's TVL reached $500 million, with a 40.4% increase in the past month. Artemis data shows that Jupiter's daily active users reached 195,000, with a total transaction count exceeding 110 million, both ranking first among DeFi protocols, with gas revenue of $7.38 million.

Ethereum captures over 80% of the staking market share, while Solana's market landscape becomes more diversified

From the historical development of Ethereum, staking is one of the important drivers for unlocking the on-chain economy. From various data, it can be seen that Ethereum currently has a stronger leading advantage over Solana in terms of liquid staking scale and ecological richness, but Solana is showing significant growth potential due to the gradual improvement of related infrastructure and a more flexible and lower participation threshold. Both also exhibit significant head effects.

As the foundation of the liquid staking sector, looking first at the liquid staking TVL, DeFiLlama data shows that the current total liquid staking TVL across the network exceeds $52.81 billion, with Ethereum occupying nearly 84.8% of the market share at $44.78 billion, followed closely by Solana at $4.51 billion, accounting for only 8.5%. In terms of growth rate, from the beginning of this year to now, Ethereum's growth rate is 55.1%, while Solana has significantly increased by nearly 159.2%.

At the same time, in terms of the number of liquid staking tokens, Solana has about 27 LST tokens, while Ethereum has over 80. Among them, Dune data shows that the top three LST tokens on Solana account for a total of 72.6% of the market share, while the top five account for 86.4%; Ethereum's top three LST tokens account for 80.9%, with STETH alone occupying 73% of the overall market. Thus, while both Ethereum and Solana exhibit significant head effects, the latter is relatively more diversified.

The number of LST stakes and staking rates are also important indicators reflecting market growth. Among them, Solana's LST staking number has grown from the initial 126,000 to the current 807,000 this year, more than 6.4 times; according to Dune data, the current staking number of the SOL token exceeds 390 million, with a current value exceeding $72.85 billion and a staking rate exceeding 68.1%. The staking number of ETH exceeds 33.81 million, with a current value exceeding $112.89 billion, and a staking rate of nearly 28.3%, which may be related to the relatively lower staking threshold compared to Solana; although Solana has a higher staking rate, in terms of liquid staking rate performance, Solana is only 6.7%, while Ethereum is as high as 32.7%.

In summary, Solana's liquid staking ecosystem has seen good development, but it mainly relies on leading projects, and there is still a significant gap compared to Ethereum. In the future, only more innovative products and more competitive yields can attract more users to participate.