Native staking or liquid staking: which one fits you?
There are two common ways to stake SOL. They look similar from the outside, but they work differently and carry different risks.
Native staking
You delegate your own stake account to a validator, as described in our staking guide. Your SOL stays in a stake account that only you control, and the validator never holds it. Rewards are added to that account each epoch.
- Advantages: no extra program layer, you choose the validator, and you keep full control.
- Limits: your SOL is locked while it is staked. Unstaking takes until the end of the current epoch, at most about a day, and the staked SOL cannot be used in other applications.
Liquid staking
You deposit SOL into a pool and receive a token, such as JitoSOL or mSOL, that represents your share of the pool. The pool stakes the SOL across validators for you. The token usually grows in value against SOL as rewards accumulate, and you can use or sell it in other applications.
- Advantages: your position stays usable across Solana applications, and you can exit by selling the token instead of waiting for an unstake.
- Limits: you depend on the pool's code and operators, the token can trade slightly below the SOL it represents, and the pool charges a fee on rewards. You also do not choose the validators.
Why yields differ
Differences between liquid staking tokens come mostly from fees and from MEV tips, which are explained in where staking rewards come from. Rates change every epoch, so check each provider's current numbers.
Which one fits you
- Native staking if you want the simplest setup, full control and no extra risk from a pool's program, and you do not need your SOL for other things.
- Liquid staking if you want to keep using your staked value in other applications and accept the extra risks.
SoLyrae offers both. You can delegate natively, as in our guide, or hold SoLyraeSOL, the liquid staking token for the SoLyrae validator, created on Sanctum on 11 February 2025. You can read about it on Sanctum's page for SoLyraeSOL. Other pools also stake part of their SOL with independent validators, and you can see the sources of stake on our staking page. Whichever you choose, read the risks of staking SOL first.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice.