Here you are very confused. Stride has no MASP, Stride is a liquid staking protocol. The way it works is, you have some NAM, then you can go to Stride and liquid stake this NAM via Stride. Then Stride will stake these NAM natively to Namada validators and give you the LST stNAM.
I am certainly not confused. NAM supplied to Stride will not be shielded, but staked. Staked NAM cannot be shielded and shielded NAM cannot be staked, because staking has to be done from a transparent address. Shielded stNAM cannot function as a replacement for shielded NAM’s “blending into the crowd” mechanism, because stNAM is a different token from NAM. The result is that the potential size of the “crowd”, the NAM shielded set, shrinks when staking with Stride is more lucrative.
Remember that NAM is a special case, since it is Namada’s native transaction fee token, and stNAM is not.
What difference this makes? If possible better privacy for the staker, but you are still staking NAM and getting the NAM rewards.
To simultaneously increase the shielded set and the proof-of-stake pool, instead of having to pick one over the other.
But this could be a new idea, @Stride could it be possible something like ‘shielded liquid staking’ combining Namada and Stride?
In that case Stride would have to shield NAM on behalf of the user and give staking rewards on top of Namada’s shielded rewards. How would Stride finance those staking rewards though?