Solana staking: how it differs from Ethereum's and what the MEV share is

Solana staking is friendlier than Ethereum's - with its own nuances worth knowing before delegating.

Key differences

• Native delegation: SOL is delegated to a validator straight from the wallet, the coins remain yours - the validator cannot touch them. No 32-coin minimum thresholds.
• Epochs: stake activation and deactivation happen at epoch boundaries (~2-3 days), not instantly.
• The validator's commission decides: yield = the inflation reward × (1 - commission) + the MEV share. The spread of commissions and MEV policies between validators is percents of yield.
• The MEV share: through blockspace-auction clients (the Jito stack) validators receive tips from traders and share them with delegators - in active periods a noticeable boost. Picking a validator with an honest MEV policy is part of the yield.

The liquid layer

Solana LSTs (jitoSOL, mSOL, etc.) work like their Ethereum analogs - with the same caveats about depegs and contracts. A separate local genre - "validator" LSTs with directed MEV.

Validator-picking hygiene: uptime, commission, MEV policy, decentralization (not the top-3 by stake - the network's health is your interest too). SOL metrics - on the coin page.