Solana Liquid Staking in 2026: Teams, Jobs and ETF Money

Staking used to be the boring bit of Solana. You picked a validator, delegated your SOL and forgot about it. In 2026 it has become one of the most serious businesses in the ecosystem, with ETF issuers, public companies and banks all looking for a way to earn yield on SOL.

That shift is creating real jobs and real investment signals. Here's what's happening, which teams are winning, and how you can get involved.

Why staking became a big business

The numbers are large. By late September 2026, roughly 437.5 million SOL was staked, about 69% of total supply, according to Datawallet's staking report. That's one of the highest staking rates of any major proof-of-stake network.

A growing slice of that sits in liquid staking tokens (LSTs). You deposit SOL, get a token back that keeps earning rewards, and you can still use that token in DeFi as collateral or liquidity. On a seven-day average, around 54 million SOL now sits behind LSTs, per Stake.Cake's liquid staking tracker.

The other big change is who's showing up. Spot SOL exchange-traded products pulled in $492.3 million of net inflows in Q3 2026, more than four times the previous quarter, according to Blockworks' Q3 Solana tokenholder report. Bitwise's BSOL staking ETF, which aims to stake all of its SOL through a validator it runs with Helius, crossed $1 billion in assets in early September and reached about $1.36 billion by late September.

My take: this is the clearest sign yet that Solana has a product traditional finance understands. Yield on a growing asset is an easy story to sell.

The teams to watch

Jito: the market layer

Jito issues JitoSOL, still the largest single liquid staking token at roughly 10.5 million SOL. But the bigger story is everything around it. Jito Labs says it builds the validator client running the majority of network stake, plus its block-building marketplace BAM and a newer product called JTX.

Jito also sits right in the flow of MEV tips, the extra fees traders pay to get transactions included. The Block reported Jito validator tips averaging 2,073 SOL a day in late August 2026, a direct read on how busy the chain is. As inflation rewards shrink (more on that below), that tip income matters more and more. See jito.network for the staking side.

Sanctum: staking as infrastructure

Sanctum took a different path. Instead of pushing one token, it gives exchanges, wallets and companies the tools to launch their own branded LST. Messari reported Sanctum's share of liquid staked SOL rising to 18%, and the LST market has consolidated around exchange-issued tokens, many of them built on Sanctum.

Its customer list shows the direction. Forward Industries, the largest public SOL treasury company, worked with Sanctum to launch fwdSOL, which now holds about 2.4 million SOL. Sanctum describes itself as Solana's largest staking infrastructure provider, with over $1.5 billion of SOL earning yield through it. Learn more at sanctum.so.

Helius: validators for the institutions

Helius is best known as an RPC and developer platform, but it's now a key staking player too. It runs the validator behind Bitwise's BSOL, and Helius engineers wrote SIMD-0550, the inflation proposal that validators approved this year. Its own LST, hSOL, holds close to a million SOL. Visit helius.dev.

The wider field

There's a long tail worth knowing. Jupiter runs jupSOL, the third-largest LST at around 5.2 million SOL. Marinade Finance created mSOL, Solana's original LST, and still holds about 2.3 million SOL. Drift, Phantom, JPool and BlazeStake all run tokens with hundreds of thousands to millions of SOL behind them.

Then there are the professional validators like Figment and Chorus One, who serve funds and custodians directly. You can browse more in the Stablecoins & Staking category.

The big change coming: lower inflation

On 28 August 2026, validators narrowly passed SGP-0002, Solana's first binding governance vote. It scraped through with 67.001% support against a 66.67% threshold. The change doubles the rate at which SOL inflation falls each year, from 15% to 30%, and is expected to mean roughly 18.9 million fewer SOL issued over six years. The 1.5% inflation floor arrives around 2029 instead of 2032.

It isn't live yet. It still needs to be built, tested and switched on. But when it lands, staking rewards from inflation will drop faster. 21Shares estimates yields could fall from about 5.25% to around 2.25% within three years.

That sounds like bad news for staking teams. I don't think it is. It shifts the game from "who has the most stake" to "who earns the most from fees and MEV, and who serves institutions best". That rewards strong engineering and good products, which is exactly where the teams above are investing.

What this means for your career

Staking teams are lean, but the roles pay well and the skills travel. Two live examples:

• Jito Labs lists senior security engineer roles at $180K to $200K and a senior software engineer role on JTX at $180K to $225K, all with equity, on its careers page. It even has a "propose your dream job" option.
• Sanctum has been hiring an Institutional Growth Lead for Asia-Pacific, selling staking to banks, exchanges, custodians and ETF issuers. The ad says you don't need to be a crypto expert if you know how institutional finance works.

That second point is the big one. If you come from banking, custody, asset management or compliance, staking is one of the easiest doors into crypto. These teams need people who can talk to a CFO.

For engineers, Rust, low-latency systems and security skills are the ticket. Practical tip: stake a small amount of SOL through two or three LSTs, compare the yields and fees, and bring that real experience to an interview.

What investors should watch

The bull case is simple. Staking is becoming the default way institutions hold SOL, and the teams sitting in that flow earn fees on a huge base of assets.

Stay realistic, though. ETF flows swing; BSOL saw small net outflows in the week to 16 October, per InflowScan. The VanEck JitoSOL ETF proposal, which would have been the first US fund backed by an LST, was withdrawn on 14 October. And lower inflation will squeeze weaker validators. Watch fee and tip revenue, institutional partnerships and how much stake each team keeps over time.

My view: Solana staking has grown up. It's now a proper financial services business, and the teams that win trust with institutions will be very valuable.

What to do next

• Browse all Stablecoins & Staking teams and check their careers pages weekly.
• Try a few LSTs with a small amount before you apply or invest.
• Explore every team building on Solana at solanateams.com/teams.

Building a staking or validator team on Solana? List your team so job seekers and investors can find you.