🔐 Risks
Understand the potential risks associated with staking and how we mitigate them.
Staking SOL and using DeFi involve smart contract, liquidity and market risks. Audits help assess code but do not guarantee that funds are safe.
Smart contract risk
vSOL utilizes a few smart contracts:
- Stake pool: we use the official, audited Solana stake pool program. More information can be found in the Solana stake pool program documentation.
- Points staking: Quarry is used for supported points-staking activities. Depositing in another protocol adds exposure to its contracts and operations.
- Liquidity and leverage: each integration has its own contracts, fees and liquidity conditions. Check the integration's current documentation and audits before using it. See Kamino Multiply risks and Unstake Pool risks.
DePeg risk
vSOL basically has two different definitions of the price: the "real" price and the market price.
- The real price is the intrinsic value of vSOL, calculated by taking the total amount of SOL managed by the stake pool and dividing it by the total amount of vSOL in circulation.
- The market price fluctuates based on buy and sell demand.
For example, if 1 million vSOL represents 1.1 million SOL in the pool, the pool rate is 1.1 SOL per vSOL. Rewards normally increase this rate, but losses can reduce it. A delayed unstake withdraws at the pool rate, less the withdrawal fee, into stake accounts.
Withdrawn stake accounts must finish deactivating before you can withdraw their SOL. This normally completes at an epoch boundary, but network deactivation limits can extend the wait.
To instant unstake, one can swap vSOL in the Unstake Pool or sell on the open market. However, note that:
- The market price can fluctuate based on buy/sell demand.
- If a vSOL holder needs substantial liquidity immediately, the market price may drop below the real price due to price impact in the liquidity pool.
- Arbitrage can narrow a price gap, but liquidity constraints, costs or protocol problems can make it persist.
A significant gap between market price and pool value is often called a depeg. Its liquidation effect depends on the lending market's oracle: Kamino uses stake-rate pricing for SOL LSTs, so a temporary market discount alone does not reduce that oracle value. A loss of the LST's underlying backing is a separate risk.
Unstake vSOL using the CLI
vSOL is provided through the SPL stake pool program, which operates independently from The Vault. Using the SPL CLI to unstake or stake SOL is possible, ensuring you are not dependent on The Vault's dApp being available.
Install the CLI
Install the CLI from the SPL stake pool repository.
Export your private key
Use a locally stored Solana CLI-compatible keypair, or a supported hardware wallet. Phantom's official key-export guide explains export availability. An exported private-key string is not automatically a Solana CLI JSON keypair file; do not paste it into an online converter or share it with support.
If using a Ledger, you do not need to export the keypair. Instead, provide the key as an option to the command:
--keypair usb://ledger?key=0/0
The 0/0 part should match your key derivation. For wallets imported to Phantom, use 0, 1, 2, etc. For wallets created more recently, use 0/0, 1/0, 2/0, etc.
Withdraw your stake
Use the withdraw-stake command:
spl-stake-pool withdraw-stake Fu9BYC6tWBo1KMKaP3CFoKfRhqv9akmy3DuYwnCyWiyC 5
This unstakes 5 vSOL.
Deactivate and withdraw your SOL
After withdrawing from the pool, deactivate each resulting active stake account. Withdraw its SOL only when the account is inactive; this may take more than one epoch.
To deactivate and withdraw the stake account in your wallet, follow the last steps of How to use delayed unstaking with Phantom or How to use delayed unstaking with Solflare.