Kamino Finance started in 2022 as a simple concentrated-liquidity vault manager on Solana. The pitch was unsexy: automate rebalancing for Orca and Raydium LPs so normal users could earn concentrated-liquidity yields without babysitting their positions. It worked well enough. Then the team pivoted.
In early 2023 Kamino launched K-Lend, a lending protocol designed specifically for Solana’s fast blocks and priority-fee dynamics. Within a year it was the largest lending market on the chain, surpassing Marginfi in TVL. By late 2024, Kamino had more than $2 billion in deposits — a number that made it one of the top ten DeFi protocols on any chain, not just Solana.
The KMNO token launched in April 2024 via a season-based points airdrop that rewarded early lenders and borrowers. Users who had been stacking K-Lend points for months received airdrops worth thousands of dollars. The token listed on major exchanges the same day and opened near a $1 billion FDV. Unlike many 2024 launches, KMNO held its value because Kamino was a real protocol generating real fees.
What Kamino got right that competitors missed was product surface area. By 2025 it offered lending, leveraged liquidity, multiply vaults, a stablecoin (USDH), and the single cleanest UI in Solana DeFi. The team — based in Paris and London, led by founders who kept lower profiles than their Ethereum counterparts — focused on shipping rather than tweeting. For anyone learning DeFi for the first time on Solana, Kamino became the default answer to “where do I earn yield without getting rekt?”
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