Quick Overview

Kamino Finance has cemented itself as one of Solana’s top lending protocols. With over $2.43b in TVL and its V2 going live at the end of May, it now offers one-click lending, borrowing, and automated yield vaults, combining features of money markets with leverage, LP strategies, and is seeing institutional adoption via RWAs. Kamino is interesting here because of it’s short-term catalysts: from institutional yield partnerships to a major V2 protocol upgrade that could drive continued growth in deposits and usage leading to very promising fees generated for the protocol. However, there are also unlocks happening, which creates an interesting dynamic amidst the v2 launch. We will dive into balance data of KMNO as traders should be mindful of the large balances held by investors (more on this later).

Additionally, we find that the DeFi meta is quite attractive at this moment given the recent guidance from the SEC and more specifically, AAVE and other top DeFi protocols having positive PA after the announcement. On top of the change in guidance and recent upgrades, we also feel that SOL price has been lagging other majors such as ETH, BTC and particularly HYPE - we feel that if/when things revert, the top protocols on SOL may have some additional tailwinds in the next run up. With the rumors of a SOL ETF happening in the next few weeks, we feel this will only create more positive tailwinds for KMNO. So this begs the question, what is next for Kamino and will it be enough to surpass the impact of supply concerns?

Rebound in Growth and Key Metrics

After a volatile Q1, Kamino’s metrics indicate a strong rebound in Q2 2025. TVL climbed back above the $2 .5b level, testing its ATH in TVL, despite SOL being ~43% off its former ATHs.

TVL vs Token Price (USD)

TVL vs Token Price (SOL)

In SOL terms, Kamino continues to make new ATHs in TVL.

Further, Solana’s defi TVL has climbed to new highs in 2025 with over $8.81b in TVL today, and Kamino is contributing significantly to that momentum.

Fee Growth

Fees continue to climb higher for Kamino alongside its usage metrics, with $34.86m in cumulative revenues generated so far. Fees continue to be steady into 2025 despite decreasing token prices.

Lend v2 Adoption

Lend V2 markets have surpassed $200m in deposits, with over $80m in active debt in just a few weeks after launch. Its modular architecture makes it very easy for bootstrapping new markets as we have seen with Marinade Markets’ mSOL/SOL Looping and Maple’s syrupUSDC.

Kamino’s growth shows a lot of promise and we feel it is strongly positioned for new institutions onboarding to Solana to use it in its backend, similar to how Uniswap and Morpho power multiple Coinbase features already.

Major Protocol Updates and Integrations

Kamino’s team has been shipping notable updates over the past few months, which have been driving increased usage. Key developments include:

• Lend V2 Upgrade (Late May): Kamino launched a comprehensive V2 overhaul of its lending platform. Kamino Lend V2 introduces modular lending markets and new user products.
  • Curated “Earn” Vaults now let users deposit into automated lending portfolios managed by expert partners (Steakhouse Financial, Re7 Labs, Allez Labs, etc.) with Conservative/Balanced/Aggressive risk mandates. These have seen solid traction as users can earn competitive yields on stables and double digit yield on their SOL alike.
  • A sophisticated Loan Dashboard (“Pro Borrower UX”) offering real-time analytics, historical LTV tracking, and simulation tools for risk management.
  • V2’s Modular Market Layer enables Kamino or third parties to spin up new lending markets with custom parameters instantly, paving the way for permissioned or specialized markets (i.e KYC-only pools, fixed-rate loans, new collateral types). At launch, Kamino rolled out 10 new markets with ~$285k/month in incentives to bootstrap liquidity, including collaborations with leading Solana projects like Marinade (mSOL), SolBlaze, and Sanctum.
• Institutional Yield Integration (Maple’s syrupUSDC): In early June, Kamino integrated syrupUSDC, an onchain institutional lending yield product from Maple Finance. SyrupUSDC represents tokenized claims on Maple’s high-yield USDC lending pools (fixed-rate loans to institutions). Kamino’s integration makes this ~6.5% APR yield source accessible natively on Solana. Users can now borrow, lend, and even lever up syrupUSDC on Kamino (up to 4× multiplier strategies) to amplify returns. This is the first time Maple’s credit market yields are available on Solana, and uptake was immediate and over 24m syrupUSDC have been supplied into Kamino’s vaults. A coordinated incentive campaign of up to $500k in rewards is underway to fuel adoption, co-funded by Kamino, Maple, and partners. This integration not only grows Kamino’s TVL (by attracting stablecoin liquidity), but also reinforces Kamino’s reputation as the venue for Solana users to access institutional-grade yield opportunities. It’s a strong “soft signal” of traction when a major credit protocol like Maple chooses Kamino as its Solana launch partner.
• Tokenized RWA Collateral (Apollo’s Credit Fund): Kamino is also bridging real-world assets (RWAs) into Solana DeFi. In late May, the team announced a partnership with Securitize and Steakhouse Financial to onboard Apollo’s Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED), a tokenized feeder fund representing an Apollo Global Management private credit fund. Apollo entering Solana via Kamino is a notable validation of the platform’s institutional appeal. Once an audit is complete, ACRED tokens will become usable as collateral on Kamino meaning Solana users can borrow against tokenized exposure to real-world credit markets. Kamino also plans to enable leveraged yield strategies with ACRED via its Multiply product. This could unlock a new class of stable, real-yield collateral on the protocol and attract a new source of liquidity.
• Other Noteworthy Developments: Kamino integrated Chainlink Data Streams (low-latency oracle feeds) into its price oracle mechanism in April. This upgrade bolsters pricing reliability and mitigates front-running risk, further fortifying the protocol’s risk stack. Around the same time, Kamino introduced Meta-Swap, a custom swap aggregator embedded in its app that sources liquidity across Solana DEXs with minimal slippage and MEV protection. While ancillary to lending, these enhancements improve the overall user experience (one-stop trading, better oracle security) and can also help generate additional fee streams for Kamino, diversifying revenue beyond the lending platform.

In short, Kamino’s recent updates show a platform rapidly expanding its feature set and integrations. The focus is clearly on scaling up usage and partnerships: tapping into new liquidity sources (LSTs, RWAs, institutional funds) and offering more automated strategies to retain users on the platform. This multi-avenue growth strategy has been yielding very positive results in TVL and user activity, and it strengthens Kamino’s moat as a “base layer” that it empowers Solana DeFi.

KMNO Token Dynamics

The KMNO token underpins Kamino’s ecosystem, and recent events around it are important for investors to consider:

• Market Performance: KMNO has stabilized in the ~$0.05–0.06 range and saw a 20% move on June 11th, though retracing back to its previous range $0.06.
• Ongoing Rewards and Staking: Kamino has been running a seasonal rewards program to continuously distribute KMNO to active users. In May, the project completed “Season 3” of rewards, distributing 350m KMNO (3.5% of supply) to users based on their points earned from platform activity. Notably, these rewards were auto-staked for recipients, meaning the newly claimed tokens are locked into Kamino’s staking system rather than immediately tradable. This mechanism incentivizes ongoing engagement and helps mitigate immediate sell pressure from reward drops.
• Token Value Accrual and Flywheel: As a governance token, KMNO’s explicit value accrual is still evolving. Kamino’s team has outlined that KMNO holders will guide decisions on protocol fee allocation and incentive programs. In practice, Kamino is already generating substantial fees, on the order of $300k+ daily across interest, swap, and vault fees, with protocol revenues according to Defillama. Currently these fees accrue to the treasury, but there’s an expectation that governance could redirect value to KMNO holders (for example, via buybacks, staking dividends, or other mechanisms). If Kamino continues to scale TVL and fee revenue, and if KMNO governance chooses to channel some of that value back to token holders (or reduce emissions), it could create a powerful positive flywheel: more usage → more fees → more rewards to KMNO → higher token value → attracts more usage. However, this dynamic is not yet in effect, so market participants should watch for potential governance proposals on fee distribution or token buyback programs as catalysts for KMNO but much is left to be desired on this front at the time of writing.
• Supply Overhang and Vesting: On the flip side, KMNO’s tokenomics do present an overhang risk. Around 20% of total supply is circulating as of June 2025 according to Coingecko. The core team and investors was initially locked for one year and will vest linearly over the next 24 months. In fact, the first insider unlock just occurred at the end of May (≈220 M tokens, 2.2% of supply) releasing to early stakeholders. We can see this unlock by the large number of investment recipients that are in the top balances as of June 12th, with many inflows from a distributor address happening in the last 30 days.

• Going forward, this steady issuance could exert potential sell pressure if not met by organic demand growth. The team appears mindful of managing emissions – i.e. the auto-staking of rewards and long cliffs for insiders, but the token supply will increase significantly in the next two years. Investors should monitor these unlock events and the circulating supply trajectory. In the near term, token inflation is non-trivial, and KMNO may need continued uptake to absorb the unlocking tokens. Any strong uptick in protocol revenue or value accrual could counterbalance this dilution by increasing demand for the token but the unlocks look like the below.

Future Outlook and Catalysts

In the short term, Kamino Finance has several catalysts that could spur further adoption:

• Real-World Assets and Institutions: The upcoming addition of Apollo’s ACRED fund as collateral is a promising opportunity. If successful, Kamino would enable the first large-scale RWA borrowing on Solana, likely attracting institutional users and publicity. This aligns with a broader narrative of TradFi exploration on Solana (fast, low-cost rails for tokenized assets). Beyond ACRED, Kamino hints at more RWA and permissioned markets in its modular framework, a space largely untapped on Solana so far.
• Leveraged Yield and LSD Strategies: Kamino’s support for liquid staking tokens (JitoSOL, Marinade mSOL, BlazeSOL, etc.) and now syrupUSDC gives it a leading position in the leveraged yield trade meta. Users can deposit yield-bearing assets and borrow stablecoins to loop positions and amplify yield. With Solana staking yields and Maple yields ranging from mid-single digits to double digit yields. Kamino’s Multiply vaults make such loops one-click, lowering the barrier for users to lever up. The protocol is actively incentivizing these markets (i.e JitoSOL-SOL pool rewards, syrupUSDC campaign), which should continue driving volume and fee income. The more Solana’s stake and credit ecosystems grow, the more Kamino may benefit as the leverage platform of choice.
• Ecosystem Integration and Composability: As the de facto base layer liquidity market on Solana, Kamino stands to gain from any new projects building on or integrating with it. We’re already seeing this with Maple, Securitize, and various yield vault curators partnering up. Kamino’s kToken model (tokenized deposit receipts) and modular markets invite other protocols to plug into it. For example, Solana’s structured products or asset managers could use Kamino under the hood for borrow/lending needs, or new stablecoins could use Kamino for yield. Any announcement of a major dApp integration, new use-case (like fixed-rate lending via Kamino markets), or cross-chain expansion of Kamino’s model could be a catalyst. The team has a track record of rapidly iterating (they delivered v2 and multiple partnerships within months of launch).
• Macro and Solana Tailwinds: Finally, the broader backdrop matters. Solana DeFi TVL has been on the rise, recently breaking above ~$8b TVL. If the Solana ecosystem continues its uptrend in adoption and network upgrades, Kamino as one of its largest protocols should naturally benefit from a rising tide. Additionally, improvements in Solana infrastructure (like the recent network upgrades, or Chainlink oracle support as seen with Kamino) reduce risk and make institutions more comfortable deploying capital. Potential risks to watch include any sustained SOL price drawdowns or onchain liquidity crunches, which could test Kamino’s systems (as in Q1). Thus far, the protocol has handled stress well, and a growing track record should only improve user confidence.

Conclusion

Kamino Finance is positioned as a leader in next-generation DeFi lending, with a clear focus on scaling through innovation. Short-term catalysts like the ACRED launch, the impact of V2’s new products, and continuing high-yield vault strategies could accelerate its already strong growth. From an investor perspective, the KMNO token’s value will hinge on Kamino maintaining usage momentum and executing on its vision to capture Solana’s expanding DeFi value, while balancing the risk of token emissions and value accrual. If Kamino can convert many of it's fundamentals into tangible value accrual for token holders, it may generate a compelling flywheel later down the line. In the coming months, keeping an eye on protocol metrics (TVL, revenue, user growth) and governance moves will be key to gauge whether KMNO PA will reflect that of the underlying protocol adoption. Overall, the near-term outlook appears optimistic for the protocol, with Kamino at the forefront of Solana’s DeFi and several potential catalysts on the horizon.