What Are Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) on Solana? (2026)

What is liquid staking on Solana?

Liquid staking on Solana means putting your SOL into a stake pool, which is a program that pools lots of people’s SOL and stakes it across many validators, the computers that run the network. In return you get a token, the LST. It keeps earning staking rewards while you hold it, lend it or sell it.

Compared with native staking:

A lot of Solana’s LSTs run on Sanctum’s stake pool program, including JupSOL and most wallet LSTs. Sanctum lists 237 of them, and most are tiny.

Key terms you’ll see

• Epoch: Solana’s reward period, 432,000 slots. Since Solana moved to 200ms slots on 9 October 2026, an epoch takes about a day. Before that it was about two.
• Exchange rate: how much SOL one LST is worth. It goes up every epoch while your token count stays the same.
• APY: the yearly return with compounding included.
• MEV: extra tips validators earn for ordering transactions, on top of normal rewards. Some pools pass these on to holders.
• DeFi: financial apps on a blockchain. Here that means Solana apps like Jupiter, Kamino and Meteora (the DeFi on Solana overview maps them out).
• Liquidity: how easily you can swap a token without moving its price.

How a Solana LST works: SOL in, LST out, value goes up

1. You send SOL to a pool, either through your wallet’s button, the pool’s own app, or by swapping on Jupiter.
2. The pool stakes it with validators. Right now JitoSOL’s pool is spread across 669 of them.
3. You get the LST back, sized at the current exchange rate.
4. Every epoch, rewards land in the pool and each LST becomes worth a bit more SOL.

You’ll get fewer tokens than the SOL you put in. On 12 October 2026 one JitoSOL was worth about 1.306 SOL, so 10 SOL bought roughly 7.66 JitoSOL before any small swap spread. You haven’t lost anything: each token already carries a few years of rewards. The rate changes every epoch, so check the live quote.

Here’s mSOL, Marinade’s LST, over three years:

Someone who has held 100 mSOL since October 2023 still has 100 mSOL. It’s worth 141.2 SOL now, up from 114.1.

The main Solana LSTs today (October 2026)

These rates are after fees and they change daily, so check Sanctum’s explore page before you pick.

Other names you’ll come across:

• PSOL is what Phantom’s liquid staking button gives you.
• BNSOL is Binance’s LST. At about $1.13B it’s nearly as big as JitoSOL, but most of it stays on Binance.

So why are the yields so close? Every pool is staking SOL on the same network. The differences come from validator commission, how much MEV gets passed on and the pool’s own fee. Jito takes 4% of rewards. JupSOL’s validator takes 5% of base rewards, another 5% is split between Sanctum and the Jupiter DAO, and MEV goes to holders in full.

For a first LST, size and liquidity matter more than JupSOL’s 0.7% APY edge over JitoSOL. A big LST is easier to swap out of in a hurry, and more lending apps accept it. I’d start with JitoSOL or JupSOL.

How to get a Solana LST

The staking walkthrough has the screens. Here’s the short version:

• Swap on Jupiter. Pick JitoSOL or JupSOL, check the quote and swap. Make sure you’re getting the verified token and not a look-alike with the same name (how to swap tokens safely). No SOL yet? Buy some first.
• Use your wallet’s button. Phantom gives you PSOL and Backpack gives you bpSOL. If your wallet has no LST button, swap on Jupiter.

Phantom’s button works, but Phantom has fallen off massively and feels slower now. Solflare is way better (my wallet picks).

Whichever route you take, leave about 0.01 SOL unstaked to pay transaction fees.

Getting back to SOL: instant swap or delayed unstake

Swap (instant). Swap the LST back to SOL on Jupiter or Sanctum and it’s done in seconds. You pay the spread or price impact. For JitoSOL, swapping also gets around Jito’s 0.1% fee for unstaking directly. JupSOL swaps can still include its 0.1% withdrawal fee, so compare the quote with JupSOL’s rate before you swap.

Delayed unstake. Unstake through the pool’s own app at the full exchange rate, minus its withdrawal fee (0.1% for JitoSOL, 0.2% for mSOL). Your SOL is ready to claim after about one epoch, which is about a day now.

Which one should you use? For a small amount, or if you need the SOL now, swap. For a bigger amount, or in a selloff when swap quotes are well below the rate, the delayed unstake is usually worth waiting for.

Where you can use an LST in DeFi

This is why liquid staking exists: your stake keeps earning while the token does something else.

• Collateral for a loan. Kamino and Jupiter Lend both accept JitoSOL and mSOL. Collateral is what you lock up so you can borrow. Jupiter Lend vs Kamino compares the two.
• An LST/SOL liquidity pool. A liquidity pool holds two tokens and pays you a share of the swap fees. Both sides track SOL, so the price risk is small. Next to the memecoin pools I LP, an LST/SOL pool is boring, and that’s the point. Our AMM pools guide explains the pool types.
• Split the yield. Exponent splits yield-bearing tokens into a principal token and a yield token, so you can lock in a fixed rate or bet on the yield.

Every extra step adds another layer of risk. If you borrow against an LST, a sharp drop can get you liquidated, which means the protocol sells your collateral to repay the loan. Read how liquidation works before you borrow.

What can go wrong with an LST

• A bug in the stake pool program could lose deposits. The SPL stake pool code that JupSOL and many other LSTs run on has been audited many times, but an audit can’t guarantee there are no bugs.
• It’s still SOL. A 5% yield doesn’t help much if SOL falls 30%.
• Depeg. In a selloff, sellers flood the pools and the LST can trade below its SOL value. If you can wait a day, the delayed unstake at the real rate is your backstop.
• Validators. A badly run validator earns less, so your yield drops. Solana has no automatic slashing on mainnet today (proposals are still being discussed), so right now a bad validator costs you rewards and leaves your SOL alone.
• The cheap exit takes time: about one epoch.
• Fake tokens. Scammers mint tokens named JitoSOL or JupSOL. Check the mint address on a Solana block explorer before you buy.
• Liquidation, if you’ve borrowed against it.

Basic wallet hygiene matters more than any of these, and our security guide covers it.

Restaking on Solana: what’s live

Restaking takes SOL that’s already staked and uses it to secure other services as well, for extra rewards. Two versions are live:

• Jito Restaking. You deposit JitoSOL into a vault and get a VRT (vault receipt token) back. The vault backs NCNs (node consensus networks), outside services that use the stake as security, such as Jito’s own TipRouter.
• Fragmetric. fragSOL is an LRT (liquid restaking token), meaning an LST that is also restaked. Fragmetric ended its F Points program on 26 June 2026 and says fragSOL and the protocol keep running.

Each layer is one more thing that can fail, for a small extra yield, so I wouldn’t restake a first LST.

FAQ

JitoSOL vs JupSOL: what’s the difference?

JitoSOL spreads its stake across 669 validators and passes MEV tips on. JupSOL stakes with Jupiter’s validator, runs on Sanctum and charges no MEV commission. On 12 October 2026 JupSOL paid 5.5% and JitoSOL 4.78%, but JitoSOL is about twice the size.

Can I lose SOL with an LST?

With a big LST, the realistic ways are a stake pool bug, selling during a depeg when you could have waited for the delayed unstake, or getting liquidated after borrowing against it.