Breaking new all-time highs in TVL every month this year, Solana LSTs (Liquid Staking Tokens) have established themselves as one of the fundamental pillars of the ecosystem.

Yet, despite its growing popularity and the wealth of benefits, only 6.4% of all staked SOL is liquid staked, suggesting plenty of Solana users still have some lingering questions about LSTs.

What is liquid staking on Solana? How do Solana LSTs work and why should Solana users consider leveraging LSTs to optimize their DeFi strategies?

With one of Solana's longest-standing protocols launching liquid staking services, there's never been a better time to refresh your knowledge.

What is Liquid Staking MEV?
MEV, or Maximum Extractable Value, is an umbrella term that covers a range of profit-generation strategies and arbitrage opportunities that occur within block production.

For example, by rearranging the order of transactions within a processing queue, MEV tools can profit from mismatched prices in liquidity pools across different DEXes. Some Liquid Staking providers, like Jito, eliminate MEV spam transactions and pass these rewards on to stakers, effectively boosting their staking rewards.

To date, Jito has captured over 31,000 SOL in MEV fees, sharing a percentage of these fees with over 100,000 active accounts who liquid stake their SOL tokens through the Jito protocol.

What are the Benefits of Liquid Staking?
Liquid staking has become a key component of Solana’s DeFi landscape, and for good reason. Here’s why:

1. Earn staking rewards without locking SOL - Solana LSTs make it possible to continue earning generous staking rewards, without losing immediate access to your staked assets.

2. Expanded liquidity and DeFi strategies - Users can leverage their LSTs to capitalize on DeFi yield generation strategies, while still earning staking rewards.

3. Contribute to Solana’s security and decentralization - By liquid staking SOL tokens, users help to further decentralize and secure the Solana network by delegating SOL across a variety of validators.

What are the risks of liquid Staking?
While there are plenty of reasons to use liquid staking on Solana, it’s not without its flaws. Some of the risks associated with Solana LSTs include:

Smart contract risk - LST protocols rely on smart contracts to operate. If any of these contracts is exploited by a malicious actor, stakers could be a
risk of losing their funds.

LST price depeg - Despite typically maintaining their pegged value, LST tokens on other blockchains have fallen victim to temporary price depegs in the past. This could be problematic during black swan events or periods of market turmoil.

Where Can I Liquid Stake my SOL Tokens?
Now that you’ve got a better understanding of how liquid staking on Solana works, let’s recap some of the most reliable and trustworthy liquid staking providers in the market

ANNOUNCING STEPSOL - POWERED BY STEP FINANCE & SANCTUM

STEPSOL
Entering Solana's flourishing LST landscape for the first time, Step Finance is one of the oldest Solana applications in the ecosystem. Doubling as an intuitive portfolio dashboard and a comprehensive DeFi and NFT analytics platform, Step recently expanded its extensive product offering to include its LST, stepSOL.

On top of earning generous APY, stepSOL holders are also eligible to earn additional STEP Reward Options, which are claimable every five days via the Step Finance dashboard. Stakers who've already delegated their SOL to the Step Validator can head to Sanctum's Stake Accounts page and convert their stake account to stepSOL.

What's more, Step Finance has partnered with Meteora and will be offering incentivized rewards through the following pools:
•STEP/stepSOL

•xSTEP/stepSOL

•stepSOL/edgeSOL