Conclusion

In conclusion, the analysis of the staking behavior of users of staking pools on Solana has demonstrated that the collapse of FTX and Alameda Research resulted in the emergence of fear, uncertainty, and doubt on the future of SOL token and many stakeholders tried to unstake their tokens. Lido was the largest pool that was affected by the incident, considering that Marinade has not yet allowed its users to withdraw their staked tokens. The unstaking activity has been reduced from its high on November 10th, however, the amount of staking is decreased to a level that has been much lower compared to unstaking. The analysis of the addresses has indicated that while a few addresses were responsible for the majority of staked volume, the staked volume has been more evenly distributed among all the addresses, indicating that retail has been pulling out its funds from the protocols. Besides, the staking reward-claiming behavior has also shown that stakeholders have tried to claim their rewards, especially after the incident, to mitigate their losses. In the wake of FTX collapse, the swaps activity from SOL dramatically increased, especially from this token, indicating that users preferred to not hold their SOL tokens considering its high volatility and price decrease. All of the DEXs saw an increase in their swaps activity with Jupiter having the most surge in its swaps from SOL.

Methodology

The required data for the analysis of staking pool behavior on Solana were selected from the fact_stake_pool_actions table of the Core schema of the Solana database. November was selected as the time frequency of the analysis to cover both before and after the incident. All the volumes are in SOL, which was converted from the Lamport values under the amount column.

Under the action column, deposits were considered as staking act and withdraws were considered as unstaking. Marinade Finance does not allow its users to immediately withdraw their assets, hence, they have to issue their intent through an order_unstake action, specific to this platform. This is the reason that throughout this dashboard, Marinade only has unsatking transactions and addresses, and its volume is equal to 0.

Also, the staking reward claims were evaluated separately from the staking/unstaking actions.

Introduction

The crypto industry experienced one of its hardest hit and saw a major sell-off in November triggered by the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX and investing firm Alameda Research, Sam Bankman-Fried’s business empire, which days later were filed for bankruptcy. The ripple effects of this collapse have remained to be seen as the complex web of relationships continues to unravel. The SOL token has been among the most decimated currencies during the incident since it was Alameda's second-largest holding. As FUD spread, many of the SOL stakeholders tried to withdraw their assets to prevent more losses. However, Solana Foundation postponed a plan to unstake millions of SOL tokens, implying it is more centralized compared to the likes of Ethereum, as they are limiting the amount of unstaked SOL to protect its price.

In this dashboard, the staking/unstaking behavior on Solana has been investigated during November.

Staking and Unstaking Overview

• The unstaking and staking transactions and addresses have been almost equal throughout November, however, the volume of unstaked SOL has covered nearly three-quarters of the total SOL;
• While the staking activity was higher than unstaking before November 8th, the amount of unstaking has surged dramatically since that day;
• On November 10th, nearly 1 million SOL was unstaked, accounting for 98% of the transferred SOL;
• Overall, the share of unstaking action has increased to more than 50% of the total since the start of the incident.

Staking/Unstaking Actions of Each Pool

From the staking pools’ perspective, Lido and Marinade have seen the most activity, even though withdrawing was not possible through Marinade. JPool was another staking pool that saw a high unstaking/staking volume ratio while having considerably more stakers than unstakers. All the other pools have also had drastically more outflow and their users tended to withdraw their locked assets. The pending SOL tokens on Marinade to be unstaked could act as a time bomb, and if the market does not reach a stabilized state in the upcoming days/week, it might bring massive sell pressure for the SOL and further decrease the price of this token.

Daily Staking/Unstaking on Each Pool

The daily analysis of staking and unstaking of SOL on each pool has also demonstrated that the disruption has happened since November 8th. While the amount of inflows was high prior to that date, since the start of the incident, a massive stream of outflows has started to form, especially from Lido, and to some degrees, from JPool. It is worth noting that Marinade has registered a dramatic number of unstaking orders by numerous addresses, resulting in having more shares even compared to Lido, all the while it has not allowed any SOL to be moved from its vault.

Reward Claims

Every staking platform also provides incentives for its users through rewards that users can claim after a pre-set period. After the news of FTX going under came out, many addresses were eager to claim those rewards to mitigate their losses. The volume of these claims reached around 725k SOL on November 10th.

Stakers/Unstakers Overview

The analysis of addresses performing staking/unstaking actions since the start of November has indicated that while there have been two addresses responsible for two-thirds of the staked volume, the unstaked volume has been more evenly distributed among all the addresses who wanted to unlock their funds.

Daily SOL Swaps

The analysis of the daily swaps activity of SOL has demonstrated that as of November 9th, the volume of swapping from SOL has surpassed the volume of swapping to this token, indicating that swappers preferred to not hold this asset, considering its price decline and volatility.

Swaps From SOL on Each DEX

As it can be seen on the following charts, the swaps activity from SOL massively increased on all DEXs, especially on Jupiter aggregator, as the news of FTX collapse unfolded on November 8th. While the daily number of swaps has remained relatively high, the swaps volume and the number of swappers have decreased to previous levels in recent days, indicating that the majority of SOLs have been already swapped to other tokens, in response to the drastic decrease in the token’s price.