Kamino Finance KMNO$0.031-2.7% has released the first quarterly report for its Institutional Commodity Yield vault. The USDC vault on Solana lends depositors' money to finance physical shipments of copper and gold. Kamino's quarterly report, made public on X on 12 November 2026 and covering 3 August to 3 November, says assets under management grew from $1.92 million to $48.00 million and earned $729,575 in interest.
The report puts the vault's net return at 1.90% since launch, an estimated 8.14% a year, against a 7-8% annual target that Kamino's own disclaimer says is not guaranteed. It also opens $115.3 million of new lending capacity, including a $50 million refined-fuels transaction Kamino aims to allocate by 30 November.
Kamino Commodity Yield returns: 1.90% in three months, with no fees charged
Kamino's report shows the vault earning a little over 0.6% a month after costs: 0.60% from 3 to 31 August, 0.62% in September and 0.63% in October, for 1.90% since the 3 August launch. The trailing 30-day annualized return was 8.02%, the figure Kamino led with in its announcement thread. The share price rose from 1.001 to 1.020 USDC and never dipped below a previous high across 93 daily readings, the report says.
The income comes from an agreed financing charge on each trade, according to the report, and the mandate excludes speculative inventory and material unhedged exposure to commodity prices. Kamino charges no management or performance fees at present and says any change will be made public in advance.
How $103M of deposits and $58M of redemptions left the vault at $48M AUM
The vault took in about twice its current size and paid much of it back. Kamino's report shows $103.06 million of gross subscriptions and $57.97 million of completed redemptions over the period, leaving $45.10 million of net flows. By our arithmetic, adding the $1.92 million starting balance and the interest gives about $47.75 million, in line with the $48 million headline.
That explains the gap with our earlier coverage. The vault filled its $25 million opening capacity in mid-August and, per a Kamino post we reported on 29 September, passed $50 million in deposits. The report's monthly AUM chart fits that path, plotting about $31 million on 3 September and a peak of about $53 million on 4 October.
The same chart then shows about $42 million on 3 November, and about $3 million at launch. The report does not reconcile those two points with the $48.00 million and $1.92 million in its text, which match its loan book and Kamino's thread.
DefiLlama's page for kicUSDC, the vault's share token, sits nearer the headline. It shows $50.19 million of onchain AUM on 12 November, a share price of $1.02 and $5.01 million of net outflows over the past 30 days.
The copper and gold trade finance behind the CY-01 and CY-02 loans
The $48 million is lent in two loans, according to the report, both "in good standing" with $0 of losses. CY-01, $30 million originated on 3 September, finances repeated purchases and sales of physical copper under three signed supplier programmes, and its first transactions are underway. CY-02, $18 million from 3 October, puts $10 million into gold and $8 million into a copper trade of roughly 500 tonnes.
The vault fills a timing gap in physical trade. A supplier wants payment secured before it ships; the buyer pays only after delivery, inspection and acceptance. Kamino's thread says the loan money sits in a controlled account at a "tier-one bank" as proof that payment is available, the buyer pays into that account before the supplier is paid, and the loan and interest then return to the fund. It works much like escrow on a house sale, with the purchase and resale prices both fixed before any capital moves.
The report counts $48.63 million of qualifying collateral, starting with the cash in those controlled accounts, against $48.00 million of principal. If a buyer fails to pay, the report says, the financing buys the cargo below market value and holds it in a bonded warehouse for resale. It omits the names of the traders, buyers, bank and lending operation, along with commercially sensitive contract terms.
$115.3M of new lending capacity across copper, gold and refined fuels
Kamino says $115.3 million of extra lending capacity is open as of 3 November. This is room in the existing programmes for new deposits to fill, and the report says amounts and dates depend on documentation, closing, delivery, payment, transaction performance and continued access to capital.
- Copper: $45.3 million more would take CY-01 to a full $75.3 million round. Its three supplier programmes ship 1,500 to 3,000 tonnes at a time, with 39 to 54 days from funding to buyer payment.
- Gold: $20 million would lift the gold allocation from $10 million to $30 million, in cycles that typically complete within the same day to five business days.
- Refined fuels: a new $50 million transaction, financing one cargo at a time, with allocation targeted by 30 November. The report says the agreed structure includes independent custody, payment before release, a bank letter of credit and a supplier repurchase arrangement.
Fully allocated, the two programmes would total $163.3 million, more than three times the amount lent on 3 November.
What kicUSDC depositors hold, and how redemptions have worked
A deposit buys vault shares, and the USDC moves on to the Institutional Yield SPV as an unsecured loan, the report says. Depositors have no direct security interest in the cash, receivables or commodities behind the trades, and their recourse is limited to the SPV's available assets. The report also states that Kamino's protocol, the SPV and the vault are not licensed, approved or supervised by any regulator, and that deposits carry no deposit insurance.
The only third-party document in the report is a redacted letter from Andersen (Mauritius) Ltd dated 19 October. It lists $30 million of loan receivables and $30,633,639 of collateral deposits as of 30 September, which matches the CY-01 loan. The letter says the figures were reported to Andersen by the fund administrator and that it is not an audit, review or assurance engagement. The report says an accounting firm, which it does not name, attests principal and collateral coverage each month.
The redemption figures may say more about the product than the yield does. Depositors withdrew $57.97 million across 3,149 transactions, more than the vault now holds, and Kamino's report says over 99% settled instantly, with the median queued request paid in full in under 24 hours. The largest single redemption was $5.04 million. Withdrawals are paid first from a liquidity buffer Kamino manages toward 5-10% of the vault; anything larger joins a first-come, first-served onchain queue that clears as loans repay or new deposits arrive, because active loans cannot be recalled on demand.
Where the commodity vault sits among Solana's offchain credit products
The vault is one of several products bringing offchain lending to Solana depositors. Kamino's AUTO market lends against tokenized US auto loans, Exponent's onycSOL vault adds OnRe reinsurance yield to staked SOL, and PrimeRevenue has said it is tokenizing trade-finance payment obligations on Solana, with no launch date yet. We have also tracked Kamino's growing share of onchain RWA lending.
Trade finance is a large pool to draw on. Kamino's report cites an Asian Development Bank estimate of a $2.5 trillion global trade-finance gap for 2025 and says Basel III capital rules limit how much banks lend into it. On Solana, the vault gives USDC holders a route into that market, with deposits and most withdrawals settling onchain while the copper it finances takes weeks to arrive.
The next items to check are whether the refined-fuels cargo is funded by 30 November, how fast the copper round fills, and whether the next quarterly report reconciles its AUM chart with its headline figure. The fee line matters to KMNO holders too: CEO Michael Weisz wrote on 2 November that the Kamino Foundation "receives all revenue, including revenue from institutional partnerships", in the first letter to KMNO holders we covered that week.
