If you’ve been around the Solana ecosystem for a while, you know the drill: you stake your SOL, it earns you rewards, and that’s about it. Staked tokens are like money in a savings account—safe, but kind of lazy. They sit there, locked up, doing one job.
Solayer wants to change that.
Instead of letting your staked SOL gather dust, Solayer gives it a second life. It’s a restaking and liquid restaking protocol built natively for Solana, which means your tokens can secure Solana and support other services at the same time. And while they’re busy doing all that work, you still hold a liquid token you can use anywhere in DeFi.
Think of it like turning your staked SOL into a multitasker—it’s still earning base rewards, but now it’s also powering other apps and earning extra income streams along the way.
So, what exactly is restaking?
The idea is surprisingly simple. Normally, when you stake SOL, you’re helping secure Solana’s proof-of-stake network. With restaking, that same economic weight gets reused to secure other services—called Actively Validated Services (AVSs).
These AVSs could be things like:
An oracle network that feeds price data on-chain.
A cross-chain bridge that needs stake as insurance.
A high-frequency trading app that needs guaranteed blockspace.
By plugging into Solayer, these services get reliable security, while stakers get paid for lending their stake. Everyone wins.
Meet sSOL: Your “receipt” for restaking
Here’s where it gets clever. When you deposit into Solayer, you don’t just lock up your tokens and wait. Instead, you receive sSOL—a liquid token that represents your restaked position.
sSOL isn’t just a receipt, though. It’s a yield-bearing, tradable asset. You can swap it, lend it, or use it as collateral across DeFi protocols. And meanwhile, the value of sSOL grows as your underlying SOL earns:
normal staking rewards,
extra fees from AVSs, and
even MEV (blockspace optimization) rewards.
In other words, your SOL is still at work behind the scenes, but you get to stay flexible and liquid in the ecosystem.
Under the hood: How Solayer makes this possible
This isn’t just a clever financial trick. Solayer is also tinkering with the infrastructure that makes all of this run.$LAYER
Two ideas stand out:
The Mega Validator – instead of every app setting up its own validator set, Solayer runs a shared validator network. Services can “rent” security from it, and users’ restaked SOL is what backs it all.
InfiniSVM – a mouthful, but basically a high-performance execution layer powered by advanced networking and hardware (think FPGAs and InfiniBand). The goal: super-low latency and high throughput for apps that need premium performance.
Put together, these systems create what Solayer calls stake-weighted Quality of Service (swQoS). Translation? The more stake a service attracts, the more reliable bandwidth and transaction priority it gets.
Why this matters for different players
Everyday stakers get more yield without giving up liquidity.
DeFi users gain a new building block in sSOL—collateral that keeps earning while you use it.
Developers can launch apps that tap into stake-backed guarantees without recruiting their own validator army.
Validators get fresh revenue streams from supporting AVSs.
It’s a rare case where multiple groups in the ecosystem can benefit at once.
But, let’s talk risks
Restaking sounds great, but it isn’t magic. There are some real risks:
If validators misbehave, your restaked position could get slashed.
Smart contract bugs in the vaults could put funds at risk.
If you’re restaking an LST like mSOL or JitoSOL, you’re doubling up on risk—you depend on both protocols working smoothly.
And of course, using sSOL in DeFi opens the door to liquidation if markets move against you.
In short: more yield usually means more moving parts, so you want to be aware of what you’re opting into.
The bigger picture
Why does this matter? Because Solayer is pushing staking beyond its one-dimensional role. On Solana, where speed and efficiency are everything, having a way to recycle economic security into multiple use cases could be game-changing.
Staked SOL stops being static—it becomes dynamic fuel for apps, services, and validators, all while giving users more ways to stay liquid and productive with their capital.
If it works, Solayer could become a cornerstone of Solana’s DeFi landscape, powering not just yield for stakers but also performance guarantees for the next generation of dApps.