📝 Editor’s Note:

Liquid staking allows a digital asset to be staked, and thus earn yield, while also deploying a tradable token which can be used anywhere in DeFi. This is useful — it means users can earn through staking and also through further DeFi transactions.

The data shows just how useful the liquid staking sector is — it's DeFi's second largest sector by TVL with $49.3B locked in liquid staking tokens (LST) protocols, according to DefiLlama.

Solana's LST ecosystem in particular has undergone a dramatic shift in the past four years as Jito, jumped from nowhere to become the leading provider of SOL LSTs with nearly a 70% market share.

We'll hear from analysts on Jito below, as well as takes on Rocket Pool, Lido, and Marinade, which all top 10 protocols in the LST space.

– ON Editorial Team

Jito | Rocket Pool | Marinade | Lido

• JitoSOL is the first liquid staking derivative on Solana to include MEV rewards. The LST tracks the price of SOL while accruing staking and MEV rewards. Yield is accrued in the price so JitoSOL will steadily appreciate against SOL. The token is also the most liquid LST on Solana with ~$100MM TVL in the relevant swap pools alone. Currently, two thirds of this liquidity sits on the non-JitoSOL side of the pools, enabling holders immediate and low-slippage exits back to other assets at any time.

• On an average week, $2-300M worth of JitoSOL changes hands on Solana decentralized swap pools. This accounts for ~2% of all trading volume across all of Solana DeFi.

• JitoSOL is the only LST on Solana that enables a user to instantly execute a $10M sell and have it absorbed for under 4 basis points of slippage. The next best slippage cost for a competing LST is currently over 13 basis ponts. Also worth noting that 50% of the quotes for $10M sell are between 0 and 3 basis points of slippage.

• Rocket Pool is a staking platform on Ethereum with native and liquid staking options. Since the start of the year, it has seen a 7% decline in total ETH staked — from 712.k ETH at the end of 2024, to 659k ETH now, in the 2nd quarter of 2025.

• Of the total stake in Rocket Pool, about 20.1%, 132k ETH is liquid staked, down from 28%, which was under 200k ETH, at the start of the year.

• rETH's trading activity has also experienced a decline this year. The LST started 2025 with a monthly trading volume of $473M, 69.5k rETH, rose to $521M, 175k rETH, in February, but has fallen since — with less than 10 days to the end of the month, rETH trading volume in May stands at $86.5M.

• Overall, staking on Rocket Pool, and across liquid protocols on Ethereum is experiencing a downward trend this year.

• With $22.9B in TVL, Lido is the second largest DeFi protocol and the largest LST project. Lido accounts for over 25% of the total ETH staked, which is down from the 30%-plus level maintained throughout most of 2022 and 2023. The absolute amount of ETH staked through Lido peaked in March 2023 at 9.84M tokens, and at 9.0M is down 4.7% since. This decrease may be due to increased competition for ETH. For example, the third largest protocol by TVL, Eigenlayer, enabled stETH deposits in June 2023.

• The lending platform Aave is the leading protocol where users park their stETH. This allows them to get liquidity by borrowing against their LSTs. Eigenlayer, which offers extra yield from token incentives and as rewards for securing AVS, and Spark, which also offers liquidity through collaterlization.

• Lido's LDO token is at an all-time low of 0.0003 of against ETH, according to the chart below. This may be because a reason to hold LDO, as opposed to ETH, which has a native yield, hasn't emerged. There has been discussion of activating revenue sharing for LDO holders, but no changes have been made final.

• While Jito leads in total value locked (TVL) and market dominance for Solana LSTs, Marinade retains a meaningful presence with mSOL representing approximately 10–12%. Its sustained role is underpinned by strong protocol integrations and consistent user activity, reinforcing its position as a core infrastructure provider in the $7B+ LST landscape.

• Marinade’s circulating mSOL supply has declined since early 2024, suggesting reduced staking activity or user migration to other protocols. However, onchain data shows a continued increase in daily new users, indicating that onboarding remains healthy despite the drop in net deposits.

• Staking activity on Marinade has normalized after 2023 highs. Following a surge in transaction volume in late 2023, staking and unstaking activity on Marinade has stabilized. While volumes are down, the protocol continues to process a steady stream of user interactions, signaling ongoing utility.