Kamino Finance
16 known investors
Kamino is a DeFi protocol on Solana that combines lending, liquidity provision, and leveraged trading in a single platform. It allows users to borrow and lend crypto assets, leverage staking yields, and earn automated market-making returns.
Also known as Kamino · Kamino Finance · KMNO
Investors · 16
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Also in the syndicate · 2
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements- Undisclosed amountPre-SeedSep 2023Source ↗
Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Kamino Finance is a decentralized finance protocol built on the Solana blockchain that unifies lending, liquidity provision and leverage into a single product suite. Users can lend and borrow crypto assets, leverage SOL staking yield, supply leveraged liquidity to decentralized exchanges, and earn automated market-making yields on Solana assets including SOL, USDC, USDT, JUP and JLP. The protocol's interface presents analytics, performance data and position information alongside the products.
The core primitives are Automated Liquidity Vaults and Kamino Lend. The vaults are concentrated-liquidity strategies that rebalance positions and auto-compound fees, accept single-sided deposits and withdrawals, and issue kTokens — yield-bearing fungible LP tokens that can themselves be used as collateral. Kamino Lend operates as a peer-to-pool borrowing system with a unified liquidity market rather than fragmented pools, a risk engine, real-time risk simulation and oracle systems, and an elevation mode (eMode) that groups highly correlated assets so they can carry their own loan-to-value ratios and liquidation thresholds for higher leverage. Kamino Lend also powers automated leveraged products such as Multiply and Long/Short and can be used as a standalone borrow/lend market.
Kamino Lend V2 adds modular lending infrastructure: permissionless market creation, single-asset lending vaults with automated yield optimization, isolated mode for granular collateral configuration, Spot Leverage, Scam Wick Protection and dynamic liquidation auctions. Adjacent lines include a Swap aggregator, a Kamino RWA DEX that deploys oracle-priced liquidity around modeled fair value for tokenized treasuries, equities, commodities and receivables, and institutional features such as Fixed Rates, Borrow Intents, Off-Chain Collateral borrowing against custodied assets via Chainlink attestation, and Private Credit Vaults offering BTC-backed institutional lending yields.
Founding story
Sources give differing accounts of Kamino's founding. One account states the project was launched in 2022 by four co-founders — Gonzalo Parejo, Rodrigo Perenha, Benjamin Gleason and Guto Fragoso — with Parejo as chief executive officer and Perenha as director and chief technology officer, and Henrique Netzka on the management team working on product optimization. Fortune reports that Mark Hull and Marius Ciubotariu founded Kamino Finance in 2022.
Business model
Kamino operates an on-chain protocol whose products generate fees from lending markets, liquidity vault operations and swaps. Vault curators deploy lending vaults and isolated markets on Kamino's infrastructure, collect fees from vault operations and manage reward distribution, while integrators embedding Kamino products via BuildKit can implement revenue sharing on the yields generated for their users.
Protocol and vault fees arising from lending, borrowing, automated liquidity management and swap activity; curators and integrators share in fees and yields generated through Kamino vaults and markets.
Traction
Reported total value locked surpassed $950 million in 2025 and stood at roughly $1.2 billion as of June 2026. Daily active users were reported at 45,000 in 2025, and over 45% of circulating KMNO supply was described as actively staked. On-chain activity data for the Kamino Lend V2 program showed 5,600 unique signers and 65,600 transactions in a 24-hour period, with $6.1 million of swap-attributed volume, alongside 219 unique signers and 2,100 transactions for the Kamino Finance app program. Automated vaults were reported to account for about 25% of Kamino deposits, up from under 5% a year earlier. Recent milestones include an Institutional Commodity Yield Vault reaching its $25 million initial capacity in August 2026 and a reUSD market crossing $20 million within eight days of launch.
Latest developments
Coverage in August 2026 reported that Kamino Lend held 82.6% of Solana's tokenized-stock lending market and that Kamino's share of onchain RWA lending had risen from 2% in October 2025 to 18%, with automated vaults accounting for roughly 25% of deposits. Kamino's Institutional Commodity Yield Vault filled its $25 million initial capacity on 14 August 2026, targeting 7-8% annual returns sourced from real-world commodity trade financing rather than token emissions. A reUSD market curated by Steakhouse Financial went live on 13 August 2026 and crossed $20 million in size eight days later. The protocol also lists a Kamino RWA DEX and institutional features including Fixed Rates, Borrow Intents, Off-Chain Collateral and Private Credit Vaults.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Third-party project profiles describe Kamino as the largest borrowing and lending protocol on Solana and the network's largest decentralized money market, ranked first in asset management and portfolios and second in DeFi and in lending and borrowing on Solana Compass. Kamino was built to address the absence of deep, capital-efficient Solana money markets comparable to Ethereum's Aave and Compound. Fortune's crypto ranking lists Kamino in the DeFi category and describes it as one of the largest lenders on Solana, and reporting attributes 82.6% of Solana's tokenized-stock lending market and 18% of the onchain RWA lending market to Kamino.
Kamino combines lending, automated concentrated-liquidity management and one-click leverage in one venue rather than as separate protocols. Its unified liquidity market avoids the fragmentation of multi-pool designs, while eMode elevation groups allow correlated assets to be borrowed at higher loan-to-value ratios. kTokens make automated LP positions usable as collateral, adding capital efficiency. V2's modular architecture supports permissionless and isolated market creation with curator-defined risk parameters, and institutional-oriented features such as off-chain collateral verified by Chainlink attestation and oracle-priced RWA liquidity extend the protocol beyond standard money-market functionality.
Technology
The protocol runs on Solana, relying on the network's Proof of History plus Proof of Stake consensus for low-cost, high-throughput transactions. Kamino Lend V2 is a modular, peer-to-pool credit layer supporting permissionless market creation, isolated collateral configurations, dynamic liquidation auctions and Scam Wick Protection. Automated Liquidity Vaults manage concentrated liquidity positions with automatic rebalancing and fee compounding, issuing kToken LP receipts. Developer tooling includes a REST API, a TypeScript SDK (klend-sdk), a Rust crate for clients, bots and on-chain CPI, a CLI for managing markets, reserves and vaults, BuildKit API/SDK infrastructure with Privy embedded wallet support, and AI-oriented resources such as llms.txt and an MCP server. Market administration is designed to be transferred to a Squads multisig before launch, and the documentation covers audits, safeguards and a risk framework.
Go-to-market
Kamino distributes through its own web application at app.kamino.finance and through third-party integrations built on its API, SDKs and BuildKit toolkit, letting external apps embed Kamino yield and credit products. Curators and issuers are recruited to launch vaults and isolated markets, including tokenized real-world asset markets, and the KMNO token supports governance and staking-based incentive programs, including a Kamino Points initiative whose first season ran for three months from the first quarter of 2024.
Retail DeFi users seeking yield on idle assets, borrowing against collateral or leveraged exposure; professional risk managers and curators building custom lending vaults and isolated markets; developers and applications integrating yield and credit products; and institutional participants using fixed-rate borrowing, off-chain collateral and private credit vaults.
Geography
Kamino operates as an on-chain protocol deployed on the Solana network and is accessible via its web application; one source describes expansion beyond Solana to support assets from additional Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks.
History
Kamino was created to provide a simple way to provide liquidity and earn on-chain yield, beginning in August 2022 as a concentrated liquidity manager for Orca Whirlpool positions with Automated Liquidity Vaults. The one-click auto-compounding strategies became widely used LP products on Solana and formed the base for later expansion. Kamino 2.0 introduced K-Lend, adding a unified liquidity market, kTokens, advanced risk management, a real-time risk simulator and improved oracle systems, and the protocol expanded over the following two years into a full DeFi credit stack with leveraged products, isolated markets and RWA lending. Kamino Lend V2 later added modular lending infrastructure, and in 2025-2026 the protocol added institutional and real-world-asset products.
Risks & controversies
As a leveraged lending and liquidity protocol, Kamino is exposed to liquidation, oracle and smart-contract risks, which it addresses through audits, a published risk framework, Scam Wick Protection, dynamic liquidation auctions and a real-time risk simulator. Concentrated liquidity provision carries impermanent loss risk that the automated vaults aim to mitigate. The KMNO token has been volatile, trading about 89% below its December 2024 all-time high of $0.2478. Sources also give conflicting information about the identity of the founders.
Compiled by commissioned research from 11 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Competitors · 10
by search overlap
Companies competing with Kamino Finance for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 7
launches, deals, and filingsA reUSD lending market curated by Steakhouse Financial launched on Kamino and crossed $20 million eight days later.
The vault crossed $25 million in USDC deposits on 14 August 2026, 11 days after launch, targeting 7-8% annual returns from real-world commodity trade financing.
$25M source ↗
Fortune listed Kamino in its crypto ranking under the DeFi category, describing it as one of the largest lenders on Solana.
A three-month points program beginning in the first quarter of 2024 to reward existing users and attract new ones.
In 2023 the team expanded into Solana money markets, adding lending markets to its product suite to build a broader DeFi platform.
Kamino launched Automated Liquidity Vaults, concentrated liquidity strategies issuing yield-bearing kToken LP tokens; the product began as a concentrated liquidity manager for Orca Whirlpool positions.
Kamino launched in 2022 as a DeFi platform focused on optimizing liquidity provider positions on Solana decentralized exchanges.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 11
primary sources listed
- Kamino Financekamino.finance · web
11 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Kamino Finance do?
- Kamino is a Solana DeFi protocol combining lending, borrowing, automated liquidity vaults and leveraged strategies.
- Who are Kamino Finance's investors?
- Kamino Finance's investors include Alliance DAO (ex DeFi Alliance), Faction, Hack VC, LongHash Ventures, Multicoin Capital, ParaFi Capital, Placeholder VC, Reciprocal Ventures and 6 more.