Marinade Finance • SAM Performance Analysis

SAM Outperformance vs SSR Baseline

Validator revenue advantage through stake auction optimization

Average SAM APY
—
Auction-optimized yield
Average SSR APY
—
Network baseline yield
Average Differential
—
SAM outperformance
Epochs Analyzed
—
—
Epoch-by-Epoch Performance
SSR APY (baseline)
SAM APY
Differential

Methodology

SSR (Solana Stake Rate) is Marinade's deterministic on-chain staking yield metric that computes the annualized APY/APR of total rewards (inflation + MEV/block rewards) normalized by active stake. It provides ground-truth measurement of what passive stakers actually earned.

r_E = R_E / S_E [epoch reward rate] SSR_APR = r_E × N_E [annualized simple interest] SSR_APY = (1 + r_E)^N_E − 1 [compounding per epoch] where: R_E = inflation_rewards + block_rewards (in SOL) S_E = total_activated_stake (in SOL) N_E = epochs_per_year (from actual epoch duration)

SAM (Stake Auction Marketplace) is Marinade's active delegation system where validators bid each epoch for stake allocation via a last-price auction. Validators must maintain bonds (PSR/validator-bonds program), meet uptime and commission constraints. The winning set receives Marinade's delegated stake.

PMPE (Price per MEV-Enhanced unit) is the raw auction bid value representing rewards per 1000 SOL staked per epoch. To convert PMPE to comparable APY:

r_SAM = PMPE / 1000 [epoch reward rate from auction bid] SAM_APY = (1 + r_SAM)^N_E − 1 [annualized with compounding] where: PMPE = validator's winning auction bid (per epoch, per 1000 SOL) N_E = epochs_per_year (~73 epochs/year)

The differential between SAM APY and SSR APY represents the validator revenue advantage achieved through auction-based stake routing versus passive network-wide returns.

Data notes: 35 epochs analyzed from epoch 849 to 883 (January 2026 onward). MEV data is sparse in early epochs; analysis uses inflation-only rewards where MEV data is unavailable. Network stake approximated at ~391M SOL (varies per epoch).