Guide to the New Solana Liquidity Staking Platform Sanctum

You’ve got some SOL in your wallet — what can you do with it?

Liquidity staking is becoming a more popular option; this involves staking your SOL into a staking pool rather than directly staking on the Solana network. During this process, you receive a token representing your staked SOL, known as Liquidity Staking Token (LST).

What are the advantages of this approach? Liquidity and passive income. Through LST, you can retain a liquid version of your staked SOL that you can borrow against or trade as needed while still earning Solana staking rewards from your underlying pool position.

Similar to Ethereum, there are now various LST products on Solana, such as jupSOL from Jupiter, bonkSOL from BONK, hSOL from Helium, and more. The APY for these Solana LSTs has recently been hovering around 7-10%, which is attractive in itself.

Sanctum Staking Platform

Sanctum has garnered attention for its Wonderland rewards program, which goes a step further, allowing you to easily stake your SOL LST into additional reward schemes with just a few clicks, potentially earning you airdrops.

Sanctum is a liquidity staking platform on Solana, aiming to be the base for SOL LST users. Currently, the main products of the Sanctum Web App include:

• Infinity — the primary product of Sanctum, the Infinity Pool, where you can deposit LST or SOL to receive yield-bearing Infinity (INF) tokens;
• Trade — for quickly swapping into or out of any LST allowed by Sanctum;
• Equity Account — for converting regular SOL equity accounts into LST;
• LST — for finding and learning more about the LSTs supported by Sanctum.

Wonderland rewards program

These are all useful on their own, but what really makes it interesting is Sanctum’s new Wonderland rewards program.

The Sanctum game involves collecting pets, which you can acquire and upgrade with EXP points by holding eligible LSTs listed. Each LST has its unique pet.

Once in Wonderland, you only need to hold at least 0.1 worth of relevant LST to acquire a pet, and every 1 SOL worth of supported LSTs you hold earns you 10 EXP per minute.

The evolution mechanism is set to launch soon, where each pet can go through three evolutions, with the highest level reaching 999. You can also earn experience multipliers by completing community tasks that will be released soon.

That being said, Wonderland is an easy and fun way to engage with SOL LSTs, and it’s certain that if Sanctum introduces a native governance token, participation will be a factor in future airdrops.

Interested? It’s straightforward: head to app.sanctum.so/wonderland, connect your chosen Solana wallet, and follow the instructions in the subsequent pop-up window.

That’s all there is to it!

But remember, you need to hold at least 0.1 SOL worth of eligible LSTs to start accumulating points. If you still need to purchase some, the quickest way is through Sanctum’s trading center. Once exchanged into your chosen token, you’ll automatically start accruing experience points.

Also, remember that once in Wonderland, you’ll receive a referral code, and you’ll earn 5% of the EXP earned by those you refer. You’ll also receive Referral Cupcakes, which you can later exchange for reward EXP.

Looking ahead, Sanctum aims to run Wonderland over multiple seasons while continually adding new partners and tasks. So, the first season is the chance to qualify early, which could be a lucrative opportunity for Solana airdrops.