Why Validator LSTs?

Why Validator LSTs? Solana has so many stake accounts that the network comes to a halt temporarily at the start of every epoch to calculate staking rewards for each stake account. LSTs greatly decrease the number of stake accounts and make Solana faster. In addition, LSTs are fully transferrable and composable SPL tokens, allowing them to be used in all of DeFi.

LSTs open up a lot more possibilities.

With LSTs, projects can run multiple validators under an LST (e.g. Bonk1 and Bonk2 validators), increasing security and decentralisation without fragmenting or confusing their stakers.

Validators can run incentive or loyalty programs. For example, the validator Laine airdropped block rewards and priority fees to laineSOL holders which has resulted in >100% APY to laineSOL holders. With LSTs, a validator can easily airdrop tokens or NFTs to people who hold enough of their LST.

LSTs provide a much better user experience than native stake accounts do. A user can easily use Sanctum or Jupiter to go from any token to an SVTs and vice-versa (USDC ←→ xSOL) instantly, rather than having to deactivate the stake account, wait one epoch, remember to claim it… etc.