Marinade Finance: How a Hackathon Project Became a Wall Street ETF Powerhouse

We sit down with Michael Repetny from Marinade Finance live at Solana Breakpoint 2025 to discuss their remarkable journey from a hackathon project to becoming a key staking provider for Canary Capital's ETF. Michael breaks down Marinade's successful pivot towards institutional "native staking," why they are creating a KYC-compliant "validator catalog" for Wall Street, and how this strategy is actually saving independent validators from extinction. We also dive into the controversial SIMD-0441 proposal (cutting staking yields), the future of Marinade's governance token ($MNDE), and why the lines between DeFi and CeFi are blurring faster than we think. Timestamps: 00:00 - From Hackathon to Wall Street ETF 05:15 - Saving Independent Validators 10:30 - Is Solana Overpaying for Security? 13:20 - Token Burns & Buybacks