Marinade, a Solana staking marketplace, has hired Hadley Stern, former president of Fidelity Digital Asset Services, as its chief commercial officer.
According to a press release shared with The Block, Stern will lead Marinade’s efforts to strengthen its staking solution and position it in the digital asset industry.
Stern served as the founding president of Fidelity Digital Assets from 2016 to 2018. He also led Amazon Web Services’ Innovation Lab for more than a year from 2020 and served as global head of digital asset custody at BNY Mellon from 2021 to 2024.
“Stern’s deep understanding of digital asset management makes him the ideal candidate to drive public trust in Marinade and Solana,” CEO Michael Repetny said in a statement. “Stern brings unique insights that align with our efforts to elevate the overall staking experience and further decentralize Solana. With Stern on board, we are confident that Marinade will become the leading staking option for institutions with enhanced rewards, leading decentralization, and a leading security model.”
Marinade holds 7,453,450 SOL, worth about $1.02 billion, from over 147,500 stakers, according to its website. The protocol has introduced a Stake Auction Marketplace (SAM) to bolster yields, with the bidding distribution set to take place in Q4 of this year, The Block previously reported.
The token Marinade Staked SOL (MSOL) facilitates staking within the protocol ecosystem.
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About the Author
MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020, joining just before Bitcoin first broke $20,000. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering all aspects of crypto news but with a penchant for NFTs, metaverse, web3 games, fundraising, crime, hacking, and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from the Science, Health, and Environment Reporting Program (SHERP) at New York University and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.