Kiln scores 19 points above Blockdaemon, led by slashing cover, rate transparency, and lock-up disclosure. Kiln ranks #1 and Blockdaemon #7 of 7 published staking. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.
Kiln79
vs
BLBlockdaemon60
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #1 and #7 of 7
Kiln scores 19 points above Blockdaemon, led by slashing cover, rate transparency, and lock-up disclosure.
Kiln #1 of 779
BLBlockdaemon #7 of 760
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99; a bar is empty at 41 and full at 99.
Why, term by termKiln leads on 4 of 4 published criteria; Blockdaemon on 0. The terms sum to the gap.
TermKilnBlockdaemonWeightPoints
Slashing cover6/102/108.2+8.5for Kiln+4.4 of 32
Rate transparency6/103/105.8+4.5for Kiln+2.3 of 32
Lock-up disclosure8/105/105.3+4.1for Kiln+2.1 of 32
Voting from custody7/105/104.8+2.5for Kiln+1.3 of 32
Net of the terms+19.6
Criteria roundingThe criteria block is rounded to whole points before it is spread−0.1
Reproduced gap+19.5
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below7960+19.0
Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.
KilnScore 79The white-label validator operator running under other firms' staking buttons, with 15 named custody-platform integration guides and a per-network lock-up figure published across 26 protocol docs pages (2026-09-28 count) — but a slashing base layer whose size it has never quantified, a commission printed for only two of those 26 networks, and a governance posture stated for two niche products while the Cosmos-family chains where delegated stake actually votes are left silent.Strength: Unbonding disclosure — 8/10Watch-out: Read all three parts of the September 2025 breach disclosure before you sign, and then ask for the base slashing coverage limit in writing. Kiln itself names the victim. (1) https://www.kiln.fi/post/sol-incident-swissborg---announcement, September 8, 2025: "SwissBorg and Kiln are investigating an incident that may have involved unauthorized access to a wallet used for staking operations... The incident resulted in Solana funds being improperly removed from the wallet used for staking operations." (2) https://www.kiln.fi/kiln-responds-tot-infrastructure-issue-with-validator-exit-funds-remain-protected, "PARIS, FRANCE — September 9, 2025": "Kiln today began the orderly exit of all of its Ethereum (ETH) validators", and "The exit process is expected to take between 10 and 30 days depending on the validator" — an operator-side security event that put every ETH client's principal into a multi-week forced exit, which no unbonding table warns you about. (3) The post-mortem at https://www.kiln.fi/post/re-enablement-of-kiln-services-and-security-incident-information, October 7, 2025: a threat actor compromised "a GitHub access token belonging to a Kiln infrastructure engineer", harvested cloud credentials via CI workflows, and "modified the Kiln Connect API backend controller to return a malicious transaction, which one Kiln enterprise customer signed in their custody solution, causing a loss of funds." The malicious transaction "changed the withdrawal authority of the Solana stakes, only if the existing withdrawal authority of the stake account provided in the POST call held stake balances above 150k SOL" — targeted at the largest clients, and the customer's own quorum approved it inside their custody instance. NOTE THE DIVERGENT ATTRIBUTION, which is the single most useful thing here: Kiln places the mitigation duty on the client — "Kiln has consistently recommended that customers decode transactions to verify their integrity before signing", and "Signing and broadcasting a transaction without decoding may result in a loss of authority over stake accounts, as occurred in this case" — while SwissBorg's own primary statement (https://swissborg.com/blog/swissborg-security-update-kiln-breach) puts it on Kiln: "the tampering of the transaction happened within Kiln's infrastructure", and states "no breach occurred within SwissBorg's infrastructure", quantifying the loss at "over 192,000 SOL". The lesson for this category is precise: non-custody protected the keys but not the client, because the attack came through the transaction the operator constructed, and it was not a slashing event — so the Chainproof base layer, whose size Kiln has never published, would not obviously have answered it. Ask for the base coverage limit, what perils it covers beyond slashing, and whether the operator or the client bears an API-origin malicious-transaction loss. Get it in the contract; Kiln's own institutional docs tell you to, saying "For more details and Kiln's coverage please read our T&Cs or the Order Form you have signed with Kiln."BlockdaemonScore 60Bank-facing non-custodial validator operator (70+ protocols per its homepage counter, though /validators says "50+ protocols"; ISO 27001 / SOC 2 Type II claimed; $110B+ assets secured platform-wide but only "$6+ billion" in staking infrastructure) whose staking pitch rests on a "100% slashing insurance guarantee" that names no underwriter, no limit and no policy anywhere on its own domain — while publishing tiered self-serve per-compute-unit pricing for its API product and no staking commission at all.Strength: Unbonding disclosure — 5/10Watch-out: Read the guarantee's scope before you read its size, and note that Blockdaemon's own pages disagree about it. The headline is an absolute — "backed by 100% slashing insurance guarantee" (/staking) — but the three pages that say anything about what the policy responds to do not agree: /validators scopes it to rewards ("Customers are 100% guaranteed under our slashing insurance policy against rewards missed due to downtime and slashing risks"), while the blog's disclaimer points at principal ("Covers affected staked balances. Additional terms and conditions apply. Inquire here for more information.") and /trust-center says only "Our slashing protection, backed by leading risk advisors and insurers, safeguards clients against potential losses." Not one names a carrier. The single insurance party identified on the entire domain is Marsh, which Blockdaemon itself calls "the world's leading insurance broker and risk advisor" — a broker, not the underwriter that pays; a domain-wide search for Chainproof, Munich Re, Lloyd's, Nexus Mutual, 'underwriter', 'carrier', 'aggregate limit', 'policy limit' and 'certificate of insurance' returns nothing. So settle this in writing before committing: who is the risk carrier, what is the per-incident and aggregate limit, and does cover attach to slashed principal or only to foregone rewards. Second-order: do not read the homepage's "$110B+ Assets Secured" as staked AUM — the staking pages size that business at "$6+ billion worth of staking infrastructure", an 18x difference, because the $110B is the whole platform including custody. Third: the protocol count is inconsistent on Blockdaemon's own site — the homepage counter says 70+ Protocols while /validators says "Supports 50+ protocols" and /protocols links 61 pages.
Quick facts
At a glance
2 of 3 rows read the same for both.
FactKilnBlockdaemon
PricingSnapshotKiln validator docs page "Solana (SOL)" (https://docs.kiln.fi/v1/kiln-products/validators/protocols/solana-sol, fetched 28 September 2026), Mainnet table with columns Name | Commission | MEV commission | Address: Kiln1 — "5%" commission, "100% (offchain rebates & compounding)" MEV commission, vote account DdCNGDpP7qMgoAy6paFzhhak2EeyCZcgjH7ak5u5v28m; Kiln2 — "7%" commission, "7%" MEV commission, vote account HCvnhbT3Sn5RsueDisWzzn5FkW8tAqoQK1dr7cvAVzin. The same page adds: "Each validator commission rate is public and the same for all funds on a given validator. The validator takes its commission automatically when rewards are generated. Your staking rewards are distributed net of the validator commission." These are Solana validator rates only. Of the 26 validator protocol pages Kiln documents, only this page and the NEAR page print a commission figure, https://www.kiln.fi/pricing returns 404, and no institutional contract rate is published.Blockdaemon prints no staking commission figure. The only pricing statement is the "Commission Fee" entry in the glossary of its Trust Center (https://www.blockdaemon.com/trust-center, fetched 28 September 2026): "The Validator charges the Delegators who choose to stake their tokens to the protocol via the validator infrastructure. This fee is charged as a % of any rewards distributed by the protocol to that validator." The same entry ends: "Validators set the commission fee %, but are only able to change it in accordance with limitations set by the Network. The Commission Fee is public information published on the Network, accessible by any participants including Delegators." That is a general definition of how proof-of-stake commission works, not Blockdaemon's price; the staking, validators and custodian pages show reward rates and route to "Get in touch", so the rate for a contract is reachable only through sales or by reading each validator's on-chain commission.
Asset coverageEditorial——
Region fitSnapshotglobalglobal
From the published criteria
Which should you pick?
Kiln
79#1 of 7
Leads
Pick it when
Pick Kiln if slashing cover matters most — it scores 6/10 to Blockdaemon's 2/10 there (weight 34).
Strength
Unbonding disclosure — 8/10
Tradeoff
Read all three parts of the September 2025 breach disclosure before you sign, and then ask for the base slashing coverage limit in writing. Kiln itself names the victim. (1) https://www.kiln.fi/post/sol-incident-swissborg---announcement, September 8, 2025: "SwissBorg and Kiln are investigating an incident that may have involved unauthorized access to a wallet used for staking operations... The incident resulted in Solana funds being improperly removed from the wallet used for staking operations." (2) https://www.kiln.fi/kiln-responds-tot-infrastructure-issue-with-validator-exit-funds-remain-protected, "PARIS, FRANCE — September 9, 2025": "Kiln today began the orderly exit of all of its Ethereum (ETH) validators", and "The exit process is expected to take between 10 and 30 days depending on the validator" — an operator-side security event that put every ETH client's principal into a multi-week forced exit, which no unbonding table warns you about. (3) The post-mortem at https://www.kiln.fi/post/re-enablement-of-kiln-services-and-security-incident-information, October 7, 2025: a threat actor compromised "a GitHub access token belonging to a Kiln infrastructure engineer", harvested cloud credentials via CI workflows, and "modified the Kiln Connect API backend controller to return a malicious transaction, which one Kiln enterprise customer signed in their custody solution, causing a loss of funds." The malicious transaction "changed the withdrawal authority of the Solana stakes, only if the existing withdrawal authority of the stake account provided in the POST call held stake balances above 150k SOL" — targeted at the largest clients, and the customer's own quorum approved it inside their custody instance. NOTE THE DIVERGENT ATTRIBUTION, which is the single most useful thing here: Kiln places the mitigation duty on the client — "Kiln has consistently recommended that customers decode transactions to verify their integrity before signing", and "Signing and broadcasting a transaction without decoding may result in a loss of authority over stake accounts, as occurred in this case" — while SwissBorg's own primary statement (https://swissborg.com/blog/swissborg-security-update-kiln-breach) puts it on Kiln: "the tampering of the transaction happened within Kiln's infrastructure", and states "no breach occurred within SwissBorg's infrastructure", quantifying the loss at "over 192,000 SOL". The lesson for this category is precise: non-custody protected the keys but not the client, because the attack came through the transaction the operator constructed, and it was not a slashing event — so the Chainproof base layer, whose size Kiln has never published, would not obviously have answered it. Ask for the base coverage limit, what perils it covers beyond slashing, and whether the operator or the client bears an API-origin malicious-transaction loss. Get it in the contract; Kiln's own institutional docs tell you to, saying "For more details and Kiln's coverage please read our T&Cs or the Order Form you have signed with Kiln."
BL
Blockdaemon
60#7 of 7
Pick it when
Blockdaemon leads Kiln on no published criterion and no score dimension — pick it only if a fact outside the score (country, funding rail, custody) decides for you.
Strength
Unbonding disclosure — 5/10
Tradeoff
Read the guarantee's scope before you read its size, and note that Blockdaemon's own pages disagree about it. The headline is an absolute — "backed by 100% slashing insurance guarantee" (/staking) — but the three pages that say anything about what the policy responds to do not agree: /validators scopes it to rewards ("Customers are 100% guaranteed under our slashing insurance policy against rewards missed due to downtime and slashing risks"), while the blog's disclaimer points at principal ("Covers affected staked balances. Additional terms and conditions apply. Inquire here for more information.") and /trust-center says only "Our slashing protection, backed by leading risk advisors and insurers, safeguards clients against potential losses." Not one names a carrier. The single insurance party identified on the entire domain is Marsh, which Blockdaemon itself calls "the world's leading insurance broker and risk advisor" — a broker, not the underwriter that pays; a domain-wide search for Chainproof, Munich Re, Lloyd's, Nexus Mutual, 'underwriter', 'carrier', 'aggregate limit', 'policy limit' and 'certificate of insurance' returns nothing. So settle this in writing before committing: who is the risk carrier, what is the per-incident and aggregate limit, and does cover attach to slashed principal or only to foregone rewards. Second-order: do not read the homepage's "$110B+ Assets Secured" as staked AUM — the staking pages size that business at "$6+ billion worth of staking infrastructure", an 18x difference, because the $110B is the whole platform including custody. Third: the protocol count is inconsistent on Blockdaemon's own site — the homepage counter says 70+ Protocols while /validators says "Supports 50+ protocols" and /protocols links 61 pages.
Self-identify in 10 seconds
Which one is actually for you?
KilnLeads
Choose Kiln if slashing cover matters most
Slashing cover: 6/10 against 2/10 for Blockdaemon (weight 34)
Rate transparency: 6/10 against 3/10 for Blockdaemon (weight 24)
Lock-up disclosure: 8/10 against 5/10 for Blockdaemon (weight 22)
KilnScore 79The white-label validator operator running under other firms' staking buttons, with 15 named custody-platform integration guides and a per-network lock-up figure published across 26 protocol docs pages (2026-09-28 count) — but a slashing base layer whose size it has never quantified, a commission printed for only two of those 26 networks, and a governance posture stated for two niche products while the Cosmos-family chains where delegated stake actually votes are left silent.Strength: Unbonding disclosure — 8/10Watch-out: Read all three parts of the September 2025 breach disclosure before you sign, and then ask for the base slashing coverage limit in writing. Kiln itself names the victim. (1) https://www.kiln.fi/post/sol-incident-swissborg---announcement, September 8, 2025: "SwissBorg and Kiln are investigating an incident that may have involved unauthorized access to a wallet used for staking operations... The incident resulted in Solana funds being improperly removed from the wallet used for staking operations." (2) https://www.kiln.fi/kiln-responds-tot-infrastructure-issue-with-validator-exit-funds-remain-protected, "PARIS, FRANCE — September 9, 2025": "Kiln today began the orderly exit of all of its Ethereum (ETH) validators", and "The exit process is expected to take between 10 and 30 days depending on the validator" — an operator-side security event that put every ETH client's principal into a multi-week forced exit, which no unbonding table warns you about. (3) The post-mortem at https://www.kiln.fi/post/re-enablement-of-kiln-services-and-security-incident-information, October 7, 2025: a threat actor compromised "a GitHub access token belonging to a Kiln infrastructure engineer", harvested cloud credentials via CI workflows, and "modified the Kiln Connect API backend controller to return a malicious transaction, which one Kiln enterprise customer signed in their custody solution, causing a loss of funds." The malicious transaction "changed the withdrawal authority of the Solana stakes, only if the existing withdrawal authority of the stake account provided in the POST call held stake balances above 150k SOL" — targeted at the largest clients, and the customer's own quorum approved it inside their custody instance. NOTE THE DIVERGENT ATTRIBUTION, which is the single most useful thing here: Kiln places the mitigation duty on the client — "Kiln has consistently recommended that customers decode transactions to verify their integrity before signing", and "Signing and broadcasting a transaction without decoding may result in a loss of authority over stake accounts, as occurred in this case" — while SwissBorg's own primary statement (https://swissborg.com/blog/swissborg-security-update-kiln-breach) puts it on Kiln: "the tampering of the transaction happened within Kiln's infrastructure", and states "no breach occurred within SwissBorg's infrastructure", quantifying the loss at "over 192,000 SOL". The lesson for this category is precise: non-custody protected the keys but not the client, because the attack came through the transaction the operator constructed, and it was not a slashing event — so the Chainproof base layer, whose size Kiln has never published, would not obviously have answered it. Ask for the base coverage limit, what perils it covers beyond slashing, and whether the operator or the client bears an API-origin malicious-transaction loss. Get it in the contract; Kiln's own institutional docs tell you to, saying "For more details and Kiln's coverage please read our T&Cs or the Order Form you have signed with Kiln."
BLBlockdaemon
Blockdaemon leads Kiln on no published criterion
Choose it only if something outside the published criteria decides for you — your country, a funding rail, or custody.
BlockdaemonScore 60Bank-facing non-custodial validator operator (70+ protocols per its homepage counter, though /validators says "50+ protocols"; ISO 27001 / SOC 2 Type II claimed; $110B+ assets secured platform-wide but only "$6+ billion" in staking infrastructure) whose staking pitch rests on a "100% slashing insurance guarantee" that names no underwriter, no limit and no policy anywhere on its own domain — while publishing tiered self-serve per-compute-unit pricing for its API product and no staking commission at all.Strength: Unbonding disclosure — 5/10Watch-out: Read the guarantee's scope before you read its size, and note that Blockdaemon's own pages disagree about it. The headline is an absolute — "backed by 100% slashing insurance guarantee" (/staking) — but the three pages that say anything about what the policy responds to do not agree: /validators scopes it to rewards ("Customers are 100% guaranteed under our slashing insurance policy against rewards missed due to downtime and slashing risks"), while the blog's disclaimer points at principal ("Covers affected staked balances. Additional terms and conditions apply. Inquire here for more information.") and /trust-center says only "Our slashing protection, backed by leading risk advisors and insurers, safeguards clients against potential losses." Not one names a carrier. The single insurance party identified on the entire domain is Marsh, which Blockdaemon itself calls "the world's leading insurance broker and risk advisor" — a broker, not the underwriter that pays; a domain-wide search for Chainproof, Munich Re, Lloyd's, Nexus Mutual, 'underwriter', 'carrier', 'aggregate limit', 'policy limit' and 'certificate of insurance' returns nothing. So settle this in writing before committing: who is the risk carrier, what is the per-incident and aggregate limit, and does cover attach to slashed principal or only to foregone rewards. Second-order: do not read the homepage's "$110B+ Assets Secured" as staked AUM — the staking pages size that business at "$6+ billion worth of staking infrastructure", an 18x difference, because the $110B is the whole platform including custody. Third: the protocol count is inconsistent on Blockdaemon's own site — the homepage counter says 70+ Protocols while /validators says "Supports 50+ protocols" and /protocols links 61 pages.
Criterion by criterion
Scorecard
Published criteria · weight in points of 868 of 8 cells scored. Strength is read from the evidence file; the weight is the published one. Methodology
Slashing cover
by 4 of 10weight 8.2 of 86Kiln leads
Kiln6/10 out of 10
Blockdaemon2/10 out of 10
Lock-up disclosure
by 3 of 10weight 5.3 of 86Kiln leads
Kiln8/10 out of 10
Blockdaemon5/10 out of 10
Rate transparency
by 3 of 10weight 5.8 of 86Kiln leads
Kiln6/10 out of 10
Blockdaemon3/10 out of 10
Voting from custody
by 2 of 10weight 4.8 of 86Kiln leads
Kiln7/10 out of 10
Blockdaemon5/10 out of 10
Score dimensions
weights sum to 86
The published score is five dimensions, each weighted for the category. "Published criteria" is the criteria block above; the other four are the engine's own terms — availability, friction, trust record, measured data. Each bar is one side's points out of that dimension's maximum; the weight beside the name is its points of the 86-point weighted total. The published criteria above can fill 24 of the block’s 30. A weight marked “constant here” belongs to a dimension every ranked product in the category holds at the same value: it still counts in the total, and it orders nothing here.
Availabilityweight 20 of 86 · constant here
Kiln14/20Blockdaemon14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
Kiln15.9/30Blockdaemon8.4/30
Kiln leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
Kiln2.7/10Blockdaemon2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
Kiln3.2/8Blockdaemon3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
Kiln8.3/18Blockdaemon8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order
Choose Kiln unless the term Blockdaemon leads on is the one you are buying.
Blockdaemon leads Kiln on no published criterion and no score dimension — pick it only if a fact outside the score (country, funding rail, custody) decides for you.
The published order weighs every criterion the same way for everyone. To weigh them your way, run .
From the published order
Next best action
If this isn't your case
Other matchups worth comparing
How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.
Scored by Do you keep custody and still get to vote — and who presses the button? · 20% (Kiln 7/10, Blockdaemon 5/10)
Insolvency failure: the firm or issuer that owes you cannot pay.
Scored by If a validator you delegated to gets slashed, who actually writes the cheque? · 34% (Kiln 6/10, Blockdaemon 2/10)
Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
Scored by How long are the assets locked per network, and did they tell you before you signed? · 22% (Kiln 8/10, Blockdaemon 5/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Liveness failure, Custody failure, Regulatory failure, Execution failure, Information failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Also scored, as cost, quality or a summary of several families: Can you find the rate you would actually pay without booking a sales call? (24%).
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Kiln scores 19 points above Blockdaemon, led by slashing cover, rate transparency, and lock-up disclosure. Published scores, out of 100: Kiln 79 (rank 1 of 7 staking), Blockdaemon 60 (rank 7 of 7).
Reviewed means both products compared here was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
Answer a few quick questions and get one clear recommendation based on how you actually plan to use crypto — with rationale, tradeoffs, and a path to monitor the decision.
No signup·Free first pass · Private·No spam · No account
Not financial advice · Independent · Always do your own research
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
Kiln #1 of 779