Solana’s liquid staking market just got a new entrant with a genuinely different pitch. Raiku, an infrastructure startup founded by Robin Nordnes, launched $rkuSOL on June 3, introducing what it calls the first liquid staking token on Solana that derives yield not just from staking rewards and MEV, but also from blockspace revenue generated through auctions.
How blockspace auctions change the yield equation
The system uses two auction types: Ahead-of-Time (AOT) auctions, which allow users to pre-book blockspace up to 60 seconds in advance, and Just-in-Time (JIT) auctions for more immediate needs. Raiku claims these auctions enable sub-30ms pre-confirmations, which is the kind of speed guarantee that high-frequency traders and time-sensitive DeFi protocols would pay a premium for.
Current annual percentage yields for $rkuSOL land between approximately 3.86% and 5.77%, depending on which platform you’re using.
The launch ecosystem and early metrics
