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The RealValidator Team Editorial team

Marinade SAM is Marinade Finance's Stake Auction Marketplace, the per-epoch auction mechanism by which Marinade distributes its delegated stake across validators based on the APY terms each validator bids. It replaced the older "Marinade Score" formula and is the only Marinade stake-distribution system in production as of epoch 971 (2026-05-15).

Under SAM, validators submit a bid expressing the APY they will deliver to mSOL holders for the upcoming epoch. Marinade ranks bids, applies eligibility filters (uptime, version freshness, decentralization signals), and allocates stake to the bids that maximize mSOL APY while honoring decentralization constraints. The auction repeats every epoch, so allocations are dynamic, not static rankings.

What SAM replaced

The original Marinade Score was a composite formula combining skip rate, commission, vote credits, version freshness, and decentralization penalties, used to rank validators in a fixed hierarchy. Marinade deprecated this approach with the SAM launch (per the Marinade governance forum and Marinade docs) because static scoring did not respond to validator pricing behavior and produced sticky allocations that under-rewarded mSOL holders.

The transition shifted Marinade from "we score you, then delegate" to "you bid an APY, we delegate to the best aggregate set of bids." This is also why third-party blog posts and aggregator pages dated before mid-2024 still incorrectly reference "Marinade Score" when describing how Marinade selects validators. The current term is Marinade SAM, and the metric a validator's profile should surface is its SAM eligibility status and most recent bid, not a "Marinade Score."

How bids work

A validator's SAM bid is a commitment to deliver a target mSOL APY for the epoch, expressed by adjusting effective commission, MEV-sharing terms, or both. The bid is the validator's offer; the auction picks winners. Validators that fail to deliver their bid in a settled epoch face downgraded ranking in subsequent auctions.

Eligibility filters layered on top of the bid include:

  • Uptime / skip rate — validators outside acceptable performance bands (see the skip rate entry) are excluded from bidding regardless of price.
  • Software version — outdated Agave or Jito-Solana releases (see the Firedancer / Frankendancer entry) disqualify a validator from current auctions.
  • Decentralization signals — ASN, city, and country concentration penalties shape eligibility weight; over-concentrated infrastructure (see the ASN entry) reduces allocation.

The intent is that price competition between qualified operators delivers a higher mSOL APY than a static-scoring system would.

What stakers should read off a validator profile

For a staker comparing validators, two SAM facts matter and should appear on every validator profile:

  1. SAM eligibility status at the most recent epoch — eligible, ineligible, or paused.
  2. Effective stake from Marinade in SOL and as a percentage of the validator's total active stake.

A validator with large Marinade stake and current eligibility is bidding competitively at the current epoch; a validator that lost Marinade allocation may indicate either an uncompetitive bid or a failed eligibility filter. Both are observable on Marinade's validator dashboard and via the Marinade GraphQL API.

Why this matters beyond Marinade

Other stake pools (Jito Stake Pool, SolBlaze — see the stake pool entry) use different selection mechanisms, but SAM has set the trend for algorithmic, market-based stake distribution. Citations of "Marinade Score" in third-party content are a reliable signal that the source has not been updated since 2024 and should be cross-checked.

Sources

SAM auction state cited: Marinade dashboard, epoch 971, 2026-05-15. Bids and allocations update every epoch; verify on a fresh snapshot when citing a specific validator's allocation.