Loading page…
Loading page…
Learn
Nothing here is specific to LST Radar. It is the background you need before any number on the site means anything: what staking is, what a liquid staking token is, where the yield comes from and what can go wrong. Ten minutes, no prior knowledge assumed.
Solana runs on validators. Staking means lending your SOL's voting weight to one of them, and being paid for it every epoch.
Validators are the computers that produce blocks and vote on which transactions count. The more SOL is staked to a validator, the more weight its votes carry. Anyone can delegate SOL to a validator without running one; the SOL never leaves your control and can be undelegated at any time.
In return the network pays stake rewards. They are paid once per epoch and compound automatically into your stake. An epoch is Solana’s reward cycle: a fixed run of 432,000 slots, the network’s basic unit of time. How long an epoch takes on the clock depends on how fast slots are being produced, which has changed over the network’s life, so it is better thought of as a count than a number of days. Stake only becomes active, and only stops, at an epoch boundary, so getting in or out always involves waiting for the current epoch to end.
The catch is that staked SOL is stuck. You cannot spend it, trade it or use it anywhere else while it is delegated, and unstaking takes up to an epoch before the SOL is yours to move again.
A stake pool stakes SOL for you and hands you a token that represents your share. That token is a liquid staking token, or LST.
A stake pool is a program that collects SOL from many people, spreads it across a set of validators, and keeps track of who owns what by issuing a token. Deposit SOL, get tokens; redeem tokens, get SOL back. The pool handles the delegation, the validator selection and the epoch timing.
The token is what makes the stake liquid. You can hold it, sell it, lend it or post it as collateral, all while the SOL behind it stays staked and earning. Familiar examples include JitoSOL, mSOL, bSOL and the many smaller pools listed on this site.
As the pool’s stake earns rewards, each token becomes redeemable for a little more SOL. The number of tokens you hold does not change; what each one is worth does.
In numbers
You deposit 100 SOL when one token redeems for 1.1200 SOL. You receive 89.29 tokens.
A year later each token redeems for 1.2000 SOL. You still hold 89.29 tokens, now worth 107.14 SOL.
Two sources, minus two cuts. Inflation rewards and MEV tips come in; the validators' commission and the pool's own fee come out.
| Flow | What it is |
|---|---|
| Inflation rewards | New SOL the network issues to stakers every epoch, on a schedule that slowly declines over time. |
| MEV and priority tips | Extra fees users pay to have transactions ordered favourably. Many validators pass a share to their stakers. |
| Validator commission | The percentage each validator keeps from the rewards it earns before the rest reaches the pool. |
| Pool fee | The pool's own ongoing cut, usually a percentage of rewards, sometimes zero. |
Pools differ because these differ. A pool whose validators charge low commission and share MEV, and whose own fee is small, will see its token value grow faster than one where the cuts are larger. Validator downtime reduces rewards too, so how well the pool chooses and monitors its validators matters.
A token has two prices: what the pool will give you for it, and what someone on an exchange will. Only the first one measures what the pool earned.
Redemption value is the SOL you get by handing the token back to the pool. It only moves when the pool earns rewards or changes its fees, so it climbs slowly and rarely falls.
Market price is what a token fetches on a decentralised exchange right now. It usually sits close to redemption value, because anyone can redeem the token for the real thing, but it can dip below during a rush to exit or for tokens with thin liquidity. That gap is about the market, not about the pool.
Any comparison of pools worth trusting is built on redemption value. LST Radar reads it directly from the chain and derives every figure from it.
You can enter through the pool or through an exchange, and leave the same two ways. The difference is fees and waiting.
| Route | How it works | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit via pool | Send SOL to the pool, receive tokens at the current redemption value. | Sometimes a small deposit fee; often none. |
| Buy on an exchange | Swap SOL for the token at the market price. | Trading fees and any gap between price and redemption value. |
| Delayed unstake | Ask the pool to unstake. Your SOL arrives once the current epoch ends. | The pool's withdrawal fee, if any. |
| Instant exit | Sell on an exchange, or use a pool's instant-unstake liquidity if it offers one. | Trading fees, slippage, or an instant-unstake fee. |
Deposit and withdrawal fees are charged once, so what they cost you per year depends on how long you hold. That is why this site shows them against a holding period rather than folding them into an APY.
Liquid staking adds a program, a set of validators and a market between you and your SOL. Each is a way to lose something.
Compare on what you would actually have ended up with, over the same period, from the same stake, after one-off fees. Then read the caveats.
That is what this site is built to do. Explore lists every pool; Overview replays a stake through the pools you pick. How the numbers work shows the arithmetic, and the disclosure tells you which pool the people who built it have an interest in, so you can read the rest accordingly.