Solana gives you three ways to let someone else act on your funds, and each one grants a different power. A stake authority can point your stake at a validator but can never withdraw it. An SPL Token delegate can send your tokens to any address, up to a cap you set. A liquid staking pool takes your SOL into a program's custody and hands back a token. This piece compares what each model lets a delegate do, what the three have in common, and how the differences decide which one an AI agent that pays for its own compute should get.

Every Solana stake account has two authorities defined at creation: a stake authority and a withdraw authority. According to Solana's stake account documentation , the stake authority can delegate the account to a validator, deactivate it, split it, merge it, and assign a new stake authority. It cannot withdraw.…