Marinade moves stake off validators that cannot pay the Alpenglow fee
According to Marinade, the SAM stake auction moves stake off validators that cannot pay the Alpenglow fee. The Foundation sets that fee at 0.8 SOL per epoch.
According to Marinade, the stake auction SAM checks the vote-account balance. It moves stake off validators that cannot pay the fee. Marinade wrote that on X on 23 October.
If the balance runs short, the validator sits out with its stake, according to Marinade.
The Solana Foundation upgrade page sets the fee at 0.8 SOL per epoch. The vote account pays it at the start of each epoch. The 0.8 SOL sits above the rent-exempt minimum.
According to the same page, a validator that does not pay does not vote or produce blocks in the following epoch. Alpenglow has been active on mainnet-beta since epoch 1064 on 21 October 2026.
A commit in the ds-sam repository on 21 October refuses validators when the vote-account balance does not cover the rent-exempt minimum and the fee for the next epoch. In that build they get no SAM stake and no backstop stake. The commit does not show whether the auction on 23 October is already running that build.
Sources
- Marinade — Post, 23 October 2026, 10:19 a.m. Berlin
- Solana Foundation — BLS pubkey and the validator admission ticket, read 23 October 2026
- Anza — Vote accounts, validator admission ticket, read 23 October 2026
- Marinade — Commit in ds-sam, 21 October 2026: refusal when the API marks the validator ineligible for the fee
- Marinade — Commit in delegation-strategy-2, 20 October 2026: balance check, rent plus the fee for the next epoch