Undervalued Project Research Report - @MarinadeFinance What is Marinade? In a nutshell, it is the largest and oldest staking protocol on the Solana network, and an important infrastructure for promoting network decentralization and enhancing staking yields. The core business of Marinade is to automatically delegate users' SOL to a selected group of validators, achieving a win-win situation of network decentralization and stable returns. Users can choose native staking or participate in liquid staking, exchanging for tokens mSOL that represent staked SOL, balancing liquidity and yield. From the perspective of DeFi products, Marinade is the staking version of Yearn, optimizing yields while facilitating asset liquidity. However, in terms of the valuation of the $MNDE token, it is significantly undervalued by the market. MNDE Token Structure The governance token of Marinade, $MNDE, has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, of which: 1. 7.5% (75 million) is allocated to early contributors, which will be fully unlocked by January 2024. 2. 92.5% (925 million) belongs to the DAO treasury and is still under DAO control. Among them, 13.8% (138 million) of MNDE is used for the TVL incentive program, controlled by the DAO and released in phases, tied to TVL growth targets. It can be seen that the current circulating supply of MNDE in the market is very limited, and most of it is still controlled by the DAO, laying the groundwork for future token mechanism reforms and value recovery. Real Data vs Market Pricing Currently, Marinade's annual protocol revenue has exceeded $10 million, with over 150,000 token holders, but its governance token MNDE has a market cap of only $46 million, corresponding to a P/S (price-to-sales ratio) of just 1.8 times. In comparison, mainstream DeFi projects in the Ethereum ecosystem (such as Lido, Aave, Uniswap) have an average P/S between 20 and 30 times. Even with a conservative reference of 10x, the reasonable valuation of MNDE should be close to over $100 million, with the current price severely deviating from its protocol fundamentals. Official Buyback Model Launch A significant positive development will arrive in September 2025, when Marinade will officially launch the protocol revenue distribution mechanism: 50% of the protocol revenue (about $5 million) will be used annually to buy back MNDE. 5% of the total supply (50 million MNDE) will be burned to enhance scarcity narrative. 25 million MNDE will be airdropped to active community participants to stimulate governance activity. Additionally, the DAO has decided through an extra proposal to allocate 40% of revenue for direct buybacks + burns, which, based on current revenue estimates, could eliminate 10% of circulating tokens in a year, creating a strong positive feedback loop of supply and demand. External Drivers, Institutional Forces are Entering In 2025, Marinade will also welcome two major benefits: 1. Selected as the official staking service provider for the first Solana ETF in the U.S. 2. Integrated as the default staking solution by BitGo (a large custody institution). This means that in the future, when institutions purchase SOL ETFs or custody SOL assets, they may indirectly use Marinade for staking operations, thereby driving protocol TVL growth and increasing the indirect demand for MNDE. Recommendation: Based on risk control and potential comparison, it is recommended to take a light position in MNDE to avoid missing out, especially before entering the buyback window in September. As the buyback and burn mechanism gradually advances, it may enter a fast lane for valuation recovery in the medium to long term.