Nansen and Sanctum have done that launched a new liquid staking framework on Solana designed to make staking SOL as easy as exchanging a token.
The system, also called the “universal staking router”, links multiple liquid staking tokens (LSTs) such as mSOL, jitoSOL and bSOL into one standardized route.
Instead of users choosing individual validators or having to juggle different betting pools, Sanctum automatically routes deposits to the best-performing validator mix, while Nansen provides the analytics layer that tracks these flows in real time.
The launch marks a concrete effort to standardize Solana’s fragmented staking market, which has become large but disjointed. The chain is home to $11.6 billion in total value locked (TVL), with $15.5 billion in stablecoins and approximately $1.34 million in daily on-chain revenue.
Yet liquidity deployment remains spread across protocols: Jupiter ($3.44 billion TVL), Kamino ($3.29 billion), Jito ($2.94 billion), and Sanctum ($2.53 billion) each operate semi-isolated pools that limit capital reuse.
Solana’s new betting backbone
At its core, Sanctum’s router turns staking into a liquidity problem, not a governance problem. By connecting pools under a shared standard, the framework allows users to mine or switch between LSTs via unified liquidity instead of fragmented order books.
This change also makes Solana’s DeFi stack, DEXs like Raydium and Drift, offenders, and credit markets more efficient, as LSTs can now move freely between them without custom integrations.
Nansen’s role is to quantify this network. The dashboards will map validator performance, stake returns, and liquidity depth across the new rails, helping users identify optimal routes and allowing institutions to track flows with the same transparency they already have for Ethereum’s LST markets.
This partnership enters a volatile phase for Solana DeFi. Among the top protocols, seven-day TVL losses range from -4% to -27%, with monthly declines of more than 10% in several major pools.
Even as the network posts two million active addresses and $4.5 million in daily inflows, fragmentation has hurt growth. Sanctum’s router attempts to reverse this by consolidating liquidity into a single infrastructure layer.
Can Solana extract liquidity from Ethereum?
The big test is whether unified LSTs can compete with Ethereum’s mature ecosystem, where Lido’s sETH dominates with more than $30 billion in deposits. Solana’s advantage lies in its speed and cost: exchanging or minting an LST costs a fraction of a cent, while Ethereum L2s still rely on complex bridging and higher fees.
The new routing standard also makes Solana’s validator market more competitive: returns, not branding, determine where deposits flow.
The return calculations are in Solana’s favor. Liquid staking currently offers 5-8% returns, versus 3-4% on ETH, and easier liquidity routing lowers the opportunity cost of continuing to stake. If adoption accelerates, it could divert some of the capital rotation from Ethereum rollups to Solana’s high-throughput base layer.
Solana’s network economy is stabilizing even after a brief DeFi cooldown. The $197 price, combined with the $107 billion market cap, shows resilience despite TVL compression. The rollout of Sanctum could increase this if participation is reignited. Liquidity routing encourages more SOL to stay on-chain derivatives rather than move to centralized exchanges.
That feedback loop (staking → liquidity → DeFi reuse) reflects what has made Ethereum’s stETH a structural pillar of on-chain finance. If Sanctum’s rails succeed, Solana could replicate that dynamic more quickly thanks to its unified execution layer.
The key difference is that Solana’s validators and redraw programs can be built natively, allowing for future features such as instant unstaking or cross-LST lending without new token standards.
Why does this matter?
Liquid staking has long been Solana’s missing piece. While the chain dominates NFT and DEX volumes, its deployment of liquidity has lagged behind the throughput story.
Sanctum and Nansen aim to solve this by creating a data-informed, interoperable LST network that behaves like a protocol rather than a product. There are still open questions. How will liquidity migrate between the legacy LSTs and Sanctum’s router?
Will protocols integrate their routing layer at the contract level or will they rely on front-end partnerships? And what happens to MEV distribution once routes consolidate under a few large pools?
For now, the numbers are promising. Even with a market-wide contraction, staking-related protocols still make up nearly a fifth of Solana’s $11.6 billion TVL. Binance Staked SOL has $1.95 billion, Bybit’s pool has $358 million, and Sanctum has $2.53 billion within weeks of launch.
If unified LST rails succeed in merging these flows, Solana could gain a structural liquidity moat that Ethereum’s L2s cannot easily replicate.
The new rails are not so much about the hype as they are about the infrastructure. In crypto, friction decides adoption, and Sanctum just removed one of Solana’s biggest sources of it.
