Kamino Finance

Kamino Finance (Kamino) is a lending app on Solana. Its main product, Kamino Lend, lets you lend crypto to earn interest, or borrow against crypto, staked SOL and tokenized assets such as stocks. It also has yield vaults run by named managers, one-click leverage and fixed-rate loans. A swap tool with no platform fee rounds it out. Kamino launched in 2022 and is one of the largest lenders on Solana, alongside Jupiter Lend. Its token is KMNO. Michael Weisz, who co-founded Yieldstreet, has run it since September 2026.

How Kamino Lend works: borrowing, interest rates and liquidations

Kamino Lend (K-Lend) is a shared-pool lending program. Its code is open source on GitHub. Lenders put assets into a pool and earn interest. The rate rises as more of the pool is lent out, which draws in new deposits when cash is scarce. Borrowers post collateral worth more than the loan, and each asset has a limit on how much can be borrowed against it.

Kamino charges no fee to deposit, withdraw or open a loan, per its fee page. It takes a cut of the interest instead, of roughly 11% to 20% depending on the market.

Kamino Lend V2 split the protocol into markets and vaults. RockawayX notes that V2 kept the old code at its core, so users did not have to move funds. Outside managers, called curators, can now set up their own isolated markets. Each one has its own assets, price feeds and limits. That is how a market for a tokenized stock or credit token can open without putting the main market at risk.

If a loan's collateral falls too far, the position is liquidated. The buyer of the collateral gets a bonus that grows the deeper the loan is underwater. Kamino's risk page also lists daily borrow caps and an automatic deleveraging safeguard.

Kamino Earn vaults: curated USDC and stablecoin yield

Kamino Earn vaults hold one asset, such as USDC. A named curator picks which lending pools the money goes into. You choose a vault, say Galaxy's USDC vault or one run by Allez Labs or Steakhouse Financial, rather than choosing markets yourself. Each vault sets its own fees, per Kamino's curator docs: a share of profits and a yearly fee on assets.

Two safeguards can be added. Curators can lock their own money in an insurance pool. A vault can also be limited to pools Kamino has approved, so a stolen curator key cannot send deposits anywhere. Neither is required, so check each vault.

Kamino's vaults now reach people through other apps. Galaxy Curation launched USDC and USDT vaults on Kamino in September 2026, per Galaxy Digital's announcement. The same month, Kamino vaults went live in the Binance Wallet DeFi tab. In late October, Solflare added an Earn feature that lends USDC to Kamino from inside the wallet, with no extra Solflare fee.

Kamino Multiply: how leveraged loops work

Kamino Multiply builds a leveraged loop in one transaction. It takes a flash loan, swaps it into the collateral asset, deposits that, borrows against it and pays back the flash loan. If any step fails, the whole thing is cancelled. The Multiply docs explain the payoff: you earn the collateral's yield on the full position and pay interest on the borrowed part.

How much leverage you can take depends on how closely the two assets move together. The docs cite about 4x for SOL against USDC. For Jito JTO$0.332-9.5%'s JitoSOL against SOL, where both track the same price, the limit is 10x. Common loops pair staked SOL with SOL, or a yield-paying real-world asset token with USDC.

The catch is that a loop only pays while the collateral earns more than the loan costs. If borrow rates jump, the position earns less or loses money. High leverage also leaves little room before liquidation. For staked SOL, Multiply uses the staking exchange rate, not the market price. That guards against a brief price slip on the market, but not against a hack of the staking protocol.

Kamino Fixed Rates: fixed-term borrowing with auto rollover

Kamino Fixed Rates let you lock your borrowing rate for a set term. They went live on 21 September 2026. The fixed-rate docs describe a grid of pools, one for each rate and term, from a month to a year or more. They sit inside the normal Kamino Lend markets and use the same collateral and liquidation rules.

The first market came with Hastra (Hastra wYLDS$0.9990.0%) and Figure. It let holders of AUTO, a token backed by US car loans, borrow at a fixed rate on rolling 30-day terms, and the AUTO market grew quickly in its first month. OnRe ONyc$1.16-0.1%'s market followed with fixed-rate USDC loans against its ONyc token.

Take-up has been quick. By 4 November 2026, Kamino said more than $85 million in fixed-rate loans had been made. Over $35 million of that rolled into new terms on its own.

In early November, Steakhouse Financial opened markets that accept Exponent principal tokens: PT-ONyc and PT-reUSD. A principal token pays a set amount on a set date. Pair one with a fixed-rate loan, and both sides of the trade are locked.

Auto Rollover is on by default. When a term ends, the loan rolls into a new term, or onto the floating rate, if there is cash to lend. If it can't roll, Kamino slowly sells collateral to repay it, and the cost rises the longer you wait. Lenders cannot leave mid-term. Their queued withdrawals stop loans in that pool from rolling over. Repaying early costs a penalty, but only in the first term.

Kamino RWA and tokenized stock lending: PRIME, AUTO, Backpack and xStocks

Kamino is one of the main places on Solana to borrow against tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). It now calls itself "the credit layer for tokenized assets on Solana". Its share of onchain RWA lending climbed sharply in the year to August 2026. Its largest RWA market, PRIME, is built on Figure's tokenized home loans.

Most of these assets sit in their own markets, each with its own curator. In September 2026 Kamino opened a market for USD.AI's sUSDai, a token backed by loans on chips. It also opened a tGBP market for a sterling stablecoin. In late October, a market run by Sentora let users borrow PYUSD against Huma's PST token.

Tokenized stocks are the newest line. Kamino supports xStocks AAPLx$343.90-2.4%, with guides for going long or short. On 28 October it opened the Backpack Market. There, eligible users borrow USDC against Backpack Securities' tokenized Micron, SK Hynix, SpaceX and SanDisk shares. Several stocks can back one loan. If the loan is liquidated, the riskiest stock is sold first. Solana said stock supply on Kamino Lend grew about fifteenfold in a year.

These assets carry risks of their own: the issuer, the legal wrapper and how easily the token can be cashed in. That comes on top of Kamino's own code risk.

Kamino Institutional Yield vaults and off-chain collateral

Kamino Institutional Yield vaults lend USDC to firms in the real world. Each loan is fully backed. The Institutional Yield docs describe two kinds. Commodity Yield lends to traders against goods or cash held in escrow. Digital Assets Yield lends to vetted firms against bitcoin held by a custodian.

You can take some money out at once. The rest waits in a queue until loans are paid back. The docs say plainly that there is no deposit insurance. Kamino said on 2 November 2026 that the vaults had paid out more than $1 million in interest. It says they aim to pay up to 8% a year. See our coverage of the commodity vault's growth.

Kamino named six new products at Breakpoint in December 2025, per its forum post. They were Fixed Rates, Borrow Intents, off-chain collateral, Private Credit, an RWA exchange and BuildKit. Chainlink and Anchorage Digital are partners on off-chain collateral. That went live in February 2026, per Cointelegraph. Big firms can now borrow on Kamino against staked SOL that stays with Anchorage, their custodian.

Kamino Liquidity vaults and Kamino Swap

Kamino Liquidity is the product Kamino started with in 2022. Its vaults provide liquidity on Orca ORCA$1.32-9.3%, Raydium RAY$1.68-5.1% and Meteora MET$0.269-11.0% pools. You deposit tokens and get kTokens back. The vault then moves your price range, reinvests fees and collects rewards, per the kliquidity SDK. It runs on its own program, listed on Kamino's program address page. Automatic rebalancing does not remove impermanent loss.

Kamino Swap checks prices across more than 15 other swap routers, per its docs. These include Jupiter JUP$0.240-7.5%, DFlow and OKX. It tests each route on-chain, then runs the best one. Kamino charges no platform fee, so you pay only network fees and the spread inside each route.

Is Kamino Finance safe and legit? Audits, upgrade authority and risks

Kamino has run since 2022 with no reported hack of its code, and it has many audits. Leverage, price feeds, curators and code that can be changed still carry risk. Its audit page lists audits by OtterSec, Sec3, Offside Labs and RX Security. They cover Kamino Lend, Earn vaults, the Scope price feed, limit orders, Liquidity vaults and Farms.

Certora also checked Kamino Lend with formal proofs. It found a rounding bug, which was fixed and could not be used in practice. Some outside guides name Trail of Bits and Kudelski as auditors, but Kamino's audit page does not list them. Kamino's risk page says the protocol has had no bad debt since November 2023, through five market crashes.

Check what each audit covers. The Kamino Lend audits date from 2023 to early 2025. Fixed Rates came later, inside the same program. As of November 2026, the audit page listed no separate review of it.

Kamino's code can be upgraded. The solgov monitor shows that Kamino's upgrades go through a Squads multisig. A change needs half of its ten signers, then waits a day before it takes effect. No single key can change the code. But the signers can do so without a token vote.

When Binance was hacked on 29 October 2026, Kamino paused new borrowing in its SOL/BTC market to be safe. Co-founder Marius Ciubotariu said the team also blocked the attacker's wallet. Deposits, withdrawals and repayments kept working. Borrowing resumed the next day once Kamino found no exposure (our coverage).

Other risks come with the design. Prices come from Kamino's own Scope feed, which reads Pyth Network PYTH$0.062-7.2%, Chainlink, Switchboard and RedStone. A bad price could set off wrong liquidations. A curated market or vault is only as good as its curator. In any shared pool, if almost all the cash is lent out, lenders may have to wait to withdraw. Real-world assets add legal and custody risk that no code audit covers.

Who Kamino Finance suits

Kamino suits Solana users who want to earn on spare USDC, SOL or staked SOL without managing positions. An Earn vault does that for you. It also suits users who understand liquidation and want leveraged staking or real-world asset yield through Multiply. Fixed Rates suit borrowers who want a known cost for a month or more.

It is a poor fit for beginners who don't know how loan limits work. A loop at high leverage can be wiped out by a small price move or a jump in borrow rates. Fixed-rate borrowers need to watch their end dates. Some real-world asset, stock and institutional products need identity checks, and access varies by country. Check Kamino's terms before you deposit.

Kamino vs Jupiter Lend, marginfi and other alternatives

Kamino's edge over Jupiter Lend is range. It has fixed rates, curated markets and stock loans as well as shared pools. On size, the two are close. Jupiter Lend launched in August 2025 inside the Jupiter app. In early October 2026 it edged past Kamino on deposits by some counts. Crypto Briefing used DefiLlama data, and KuCoin News cited Blockworks. The gap was small. Both said Kamino still earned more in fees.

The rivalry has been public. In December 2025 the two clashed over how Jupiter Lend described its vaults. Kamino also blocked a Jupiter tool that moved Kamino loans across. Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation, asked both teams to stop the public fight.

Marginfi LST$119.85-8.3% now runs inside Project 0. That app opened Kamino markets in October 2025, so one account can borrow across Kamino, Drift and other apps. Save, once called Solend, is an older lender with shared pools. Loopscale pairs each lender with one borrower at a fixed rate and term. Kamino adds fixed terms to its shared pools and rolls them over for you. Before you move a loan, compare live rates, limits and liquidation rules for your asset.

KMNO token, CEO and history

KMNO is Kamino's governance token. It launched in April 2024, with 10 billion tokens in total.

The KMNO docs split supply four ways. The community and key backers get 35% each. Core contributors get 20%, and liquidity and treasury get the rest. Insiders' tokens were locked for a year, then released over the next two.

In early November 2026, Michael Weisz published his first letter to KMNO holders. He wrote that the Kamino Foundation owns the code and the brand and gets all revenue. KMNO is the only token. Founders, investors and staff hold no separate equity.

The foundation will spend at least $20 million over two years to add assets and bring Kamino to more apps. Most of Weisz's own KMNO unlocks only if the token reaches and holds set price levels. The Block reported that the letter sets a goal of about $50 billion in loans within five years.

The next day, the Kamino Foundation, Aave and Veda published a joint framework they had sent to the SEC. It argues that US securities rules for lending apps and vaults should depend on what users own, what rights they hold and who controls their assets.

Kamino started in August 2022 with liquidity vaults and added Kamino Lend in 2023. Marius Ciubotariu is a co-founder.

Weisz took over as chief executive in September 2026, and CoinDesk reported plans for a New York office. Solana's events team lists him as a speaker at Breakpoint in London, 15 to 17 November 2026.