Staking: You stake directly to a validator. There is no smart contract risk, as there are no smart contracts involved. The validator can’t access your tokens, as they never leave your wallet (they just get your “voting power”). The only risk at the moment is the validator increasing their commission to 100%, taking your staking rewards. You can’t use your SOL until you unstake.
Liquid staking: You give your SOL to a third party, such as Marinade, and they stake it for you in a number of validators of their choice. In exchange you get mSOL, which is pegged to the value of SOL, and increases in value every time they receive staking rewards. The risk is higher, since there’s a smart contract involved that could potentially be exploited. You can use your mSOL in DEFI to get further rewards or sell it without having to wait for unstaking.
Marinade also has “Native staking”, which stakes your SOL to a bunch of validators directly (so no mSOL involved). It would be equivalent to staking manually, with the added bonus of receiving some MNDE (Marinade’s governance token).
Yeah, just go to Marinade’s app, connect your wallet and click stake SOL. Then select Native before staking. https://i.imgur.com/J2Bjeae.png