Stake Auction Market (SAM)

Eligibility Criteria¶

Requirements a validator must meet to receive stake from SAM, and how to exit cleanly.

TL;DR: Validators must meet uptime, commission, version, bond and vote account balance (VAT) requirements to receive Marinade stake. The commission requirement in practice is that the total yield offered to stakers matches the full network rewards base, which is stricter than the 7% headline. Losing eligibility stops new allocations and gradually unstakes existing stake. Exit cleanly by withdrawing the bond, not by lowering the bid.

Overview¶

To receive stake through the Stake Auction Marketplace, a validator must meet the requirements on this page. Eligibility is checked every epoch by the auction pipeline. Once a validator no longer qualifies, they stop receiving new stake and their existing Marinade-delegated stake is redelegated to other eligible validators.

Requirements to Receive Stake¶

Each item below must be satisfied for a validator to be eligible.

Not blacklisted: The validator is not on the SAM blacklist. See Blacklist Policy for full criteria.
Supported node version: The validator runs a node version matching the semver expression in validatorsClientVersionSemverExpr. The live expression is in auction-config.json and is updated as the network moves forward.
Yield offered to stakers: The total yield the validator offers to Marinade stakers must clear the eligibility floor described in The Commission Requirement below. This is the requirement validators most often misjudge.
Uptime: In each of the last 3 epochs, the validator’s uptime must be at least 80% of the network’s stake-weighted average for that epoch. Since Alpenglow, uptime is measured from vote rewards instead of vote credits. Expected rewards are weighted by your epoch stake and leader slots, and skipped leader slots count as downtime. This is a relative bar, not an absolute 80% uptime figure: the threshold moves with network performance. The uptime check was skipped for the Alpenglow migration epoch.
Funded PSR bond: The validator has created and funded its PSR (Protected Staking Rewards) bond. Two things are checked. First, an absolute minimum bond balance (minBondBalanceSol): below 80% of it the validator's SAM stake cap drops to zero, between 80% and 100% the cap is clipped to existing stake so no new stake arrives, and at or above it there is no clipping. Second, a proportional requirement: the bond must cover one epoch of downtime (roughly 1 SOL per 10,000 SOL of stake), one epoch of the effective bid at the stake received, and several further epochs of bid reserve. See Bond Risk Reduction Mechanism.
Funded vote account (VAT): Since Alpenglow, a validator needs a validator admission ticket (VAT, SIMD-0357) to be admitted to vote rewards. Its vote account must hold at least 0.8198 SOL (0.8 SOL VAT plus 0.0198 SOL rent). This is checked every epoch. A validator below that is not eligible for SAM or backstop stake, and its existing Marinade stake is redelegated. A higher bid does not fix this. Only funding the vote account does. The validator becomes eligible again as soon as the balance is back above 0.8198 SOL. The PSR dashboard shows a tip when this applies.
Decentralization constraints: Allocation is also subject to per-validator caps and ASO (Autonomous System Organization, the data center or hosting provider) and country concentration limits. These are not strict eligibility gates but can prevent a validator from receiving additional stake. See Stake Distribution and Decentralization Constraints.

The Commission Requirement¶

The auction applies two commission-related floors and takes whichever is higher.

Floor	Rule	Config keys
Effective inflation commission	Yield offered must be at least the network inflation base less the maximum effective commission, currently 7%	`validatorsMaxEffectiveCommissionDec`
Full rewards base	Yield offered must be at least the network inflation base plus the MEV base plus the block rewards base, plus a configurable fee allowance	`minEligibleFeePmpe`

Under the configuration in force today the second floor is strictly higher than the first, so the second floor is the one that binds. In practice that means a validator must deliver to Marinade stakers the equivalent of the full network rewards base across inflation, MEV and block rewards. A validator that keeps 7% of inflation and shares nothing of its block rewards does not qualify, even though it satisfies the 7% rule.

The yield offered is the sum of four things: on-chain inflation passed through, on-chain or bond-declared MEV passed through, block rewards shared through the bond, and any static bid (CPMPE) paid from the bond.

Block rewards count. If --block-commission is never set on the bond, the auction treats the validator as keeping 100% of block rewards, so that stream contributes nothing to the total offered. Because block rewards are part of the floor, leaving it unset makes the bar harder to clear. See Dynamic Bids.

Offsetting a Higher On-Chain Commission¶

A validator whose on-chain commissions are above zero can still qualify by topping up stakers' yield from the bond, either with a static bid or by declaring lower commissions on the bond.

The gap to close is the difference between what the validator passes through on-chain and the full network rewards base. Concretely, for a validator with an on-chain inflation commission of c, zero MEV commission, and no block commission configured, the gap per 1,000 SOL per epoch is:

gap = c x inflation_base_pmpe + block_base_pmpe

That gap can be closed with a static bid of at least gap in CPMPE, or by declaring the corresponding commissions on the bond so the auction charges the difference at settlement, or by a combination.

The per-epoch values of inflation_base_pmpe, mev_base_pmpe and block_base_pmpe are published in each epoch's auction inputs and outputs in the ds-sam-pipeline auctions folder. Use those rather than a remembered figure: they move every epoch.

Static bids deplete bond reserves over time. Validators choosing to offset a higher on-chain commission this way should monitor their bond balance and top up as needed.

Where to Check Eligibility¶

Three sources help validators verify their status and diagnose issues.

Marinade validator page: A validator's own profile at app.marinade.finance/network/validators/ shows current Marinade-delegated stake, bond status, and other relevant validator information. It does not show SAM eligibility status directly. Use the PSR dashboard for that.
PSR dashboard: The PSR dashboard shows eligibility status and surfaces specific reasons for exclusion (e.g. an ASO concentration constraint).
Auction pipeline outputs: Each epoch's auction inputs and results are published in the ds-sam-pipeline auctions folder. The samEligible flag and the revShare breakdown per validator show exactly why a validator passed or failed in that epoch.

Validators should also be monitoring uptime and node health from their own infrastructure, as these are the most common eligibility issues.

What Happens After Losing Eligibility¶

Loss of eligibility is treated as a clean unstake, no penalty is charged.

No new stake: Once a validator fails any eligibility check, they are excluded from receiving new stake in upcoming auctions.
Existing stake redelegates first: Ineligible validators sit at the top of the redelegation priority order, ahead of every other category, so their stake moves before anyone else's. There is no fixed timeline. Stake reduces gradually over multiple epochs as the per-epoch redelegation budget allows.
No penalty: Losing eligibility does not trigger a Bid Reduction Penalty or other charge against the bond. Entering the blacklist is different and does carry a bond charge, see Blacklist Policy.
Bids still apply during unstake: While stake is being redelegated, the validator continues to be charged bids on whatever Marinade stake remains active that epoch.
Recovery: Once a validator becomes eligible again, they re-enter the next auction cycle automatically. There is no separate re-application step.

How to Exit SAM¶

If a validator receives stake from SAM, the correct way to exit fully is to request a withdrawal from the bond. This allows Marinade to redelegate stake away from the validator without charging a penalty.

A validator who receives stake from SAM and lowers the CPMPE instead of withdrawing the bond will trigger a bond settlement for the expected yield that will be missed. The CLI blocks this by default: configure-bond refuses to decrease --cpmpe unless --force is passed. See Bid Reduction Penalty.

Setting maxStakeWanted to zero does not stop incoming stake. In the auction, a value of zero or unset means no cap at all, which is the opposite of what the number suggests. To reduce, rather than stop, the stake a validator holds, set maxStakeWanted to the level wanted and the auction will target down to it over the following epochs. To stop receiving stake from Marinade entirely, withdraw the bond. See maxStakeWanted Parameter.

Stake reduces gradually over multiple epochs after a withdrawal request. There is no fixed timeline.