Kamino Finance is the largest DeFi protocol on Solana by total value locked, combining a money market for lending and borrowing with automated concentrated-liquidity vaults on Orca and Raydium. As of Q2 2026, Kamino holds the top TVL slot among Solana protocols on DeFiLlama, with multi-billion-dollar deposits across SOL, USDC, USDT, JLP, and jitoSOL markets. This guide walks through what Kamino is, how each of its four products works, how it compares to Solend and MarginFi, the role of the KMNO governance token, and the risks specific to a stack that fuses lending with leveraged LP positions.
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Kamino Finance is a Solana-based DeFi protocol that bundles a permissioned-asset lending market, automated concentrated-liquidity vaults, and leveraged yield strategies into one application. It launched in 2022 as a CLMM auto-rebalancer spun out of Hubble Protocol, then absorbed lending in 2023 to become Solana's largest TVL protocol.
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The product surface is split into four pillars: Kamino Lend (supply/borrow markets), Kamino Liquidity (managed CLMM positions on Orca and Raydium), Multiply (one-click leveraged yield), and Long/Short (perp-style leveraged token exposure routed through the lend markets). The team migrated the project's brand from Hubble to Kamino in 2023; the original Hubble USDH stablecoin was wound down in 2024. According to the project's documentation, Kamino's design goal is to let one deposit serve multiple yield surfaces — a USDC deposit can sit in the lend market, be borrowed against, used to mint a leveraged JLP position, and have rewards auto-compounded, all from the same UI.
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Kamino Lend is an isolated-pool money market on Solana. Lenders deposit supported assets to earn a variable APY paid by borrowers, who post collateral and draw debt subject to per-asset loan-to-value ratios. Liquidations are partial and triggered onchain when a position breaches its liquidation threshold.
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The current main market supports SOL, mSOL, jitoSOL, bSOL, USDC, USDT, JLP, JTO, and KMNO, with separate isolated markets for higher-risk assets like JupSOL, PYUSD, and ezSOL. Interest rates follow a two-slope utilization curve — supply APY rises steeply once utilization passes the optimal point (typically 80%). The protocol uses Pyth and Switchboard oracles for collateral pricing, and liquidation bonuses run 3–6% depending on asset risk. Borrow caps and LTVs are governed via the KMNO token, and per-asset risk parameters are published in the docs and updated through forum proposals.
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Kamino Liquidity vaults take a single deposit, split it into a two-sided LP position on Orca Whirlpools or Raydium CLMM, and auto-rebalance the price range as the market moves. The vault re-centers the range on a schedule or trigger, compounds trading fees back into the position, and exposes the depositor to one kToken receipt that can itself be used as collateral.
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This solves the central operational problem of Uniswap-v3-style CLMM positions: a passive LP whose price range expires goes from earning fees to holding 100% of one side of the pair. Kamino's strategies are categorized by volatility — "pegged" (USDC/USDT, jitoSOL/SOL), "stable" (mSOL/SOL), and "volatile" (SOL/USDC, JTO/SOL). Pegged strategies run tight ranges with frequent rebalancing; volatile strategies use wider ranges to limit rebalance cost. According to Kamino's liquidity docs, kTokens from these vaults can be redeposited into Kamino Lend as collateral, enabling the leveraged-LP flows that Multiply automates.
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Kamino Multiply is a one-click leveraged-yield product. A user deposits a yield-bearing asset (jitoSOL, JLP, mSOL), and Multiply borrows USDC against it, swaps the borrow into more of the deposited asset, and re-supplies — repeating the loop up to a target leverage. Long/Short flips the same primitive to give traders directional exposure rather than yield.
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The most-used Multiply strategy is jitoSOL leveraged against USDC: at 3x leverage, a depositor earns roughly 3x the underlying liquid-staking APY minus the USDC borrow rate, while taking on liquidation risk if SOL drops sharply against USDC. JLP-Multiply, which loops Jupiter's JLP liquidity-provider token, became one of Solana DeFi's largest single positions in 2025 because JLP's blended yield (from perp trader losses + borrow fees) historically ran above stablecoin borrow costs. Long/Short uses the same engine but lets traders take leveraged SOL longs or shorts without touching a perp DEX — useful when funding rates on Drift or Jupiter Perps run rich.
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Kamino sits at the top of Solana protocol rankings on DeFiLlama, with TVL in the multi-billion-dollar range across lend, liquidity, and Multiply combined. Lend dominates the share, with USDC and SOL the two largest deposit pools. Snapshots fluctuate with SOL price and JLP demand — readers should check the live DeFiLlama Kamino page for the current figure.
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For comparison, Solend held the top Solana lending slot in 2022–2023 before risk events and competition compressed its share; MarginFi grew rapidly in 2023 then plateaued after team turnover in early 2024. Kamino's TVL lead is partly a product of the liquidity-and-leverage flywheel — depositors come for lending yields, then move into Multiply or Liquidity, which adds borrow demand back into the lend market and pushes supply APY higher.
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Kamino, Solend, and MarginFi all run isolated-asset lending markets on Solana with Pyth-priced collateral. The differences are scope, risk parameters, and product surface — Kamino adds CLMM vaults and Multiply on top of lending; Solend is lending-only with a longer asset list; MarginFi is lending-only with a flywheel governance token (LST).

Yields on stablecoin deposits are usually within 50–150 basis points of each other across the three; the larger spread is in SOL and LST markets, where Kamino's deeper utilization typically pushes supply APY higher than Solend or MarginFi. Borrowers should check current rates directly — they reprice every Solana slot.
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KMNO is Kamino's governance and incentive token, launched via airdrop in April 2024. Holders vote on risk parameters, asset listings, and treasury allocations through the Kamino DAO. The token is also distributed as supply-side incentives and earns fee discounts when staked under the protocol's xKMNO program.
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KMNO doesn't accrue protocol revenue directly; instead, fee capture is reinvested into the treasury and used for buybacks at the DAO's discretion. Token distribution details, vesting cliffs, and the season-based airdrop schedule are documented on the Kamino tokenomics page. Traders treat KMNO largely as a beta-to-Solana-DeFi token; long-term holders use it for governance weight in parameter votes that materially affect lend-market risk.
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Kamino's risks fall into four buckets: smart-contract risk, oracle risk, liquidation-cascade risk, and correlation risk on leveraged products. The protocol has not had a major exploit to date and has been audited by OtterSec, Offside Labs, and Sec3, but the surface area is large — Lend, Liquidity vaults, and Multiply are separate contract systems with cross-dependencies.
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Liquidation cascade risk is the most operationally relevant. A sharp SOL drawdown forces Multiply positions toward their liquidation thresholds; liquidations swap collateral into stables, which can pressure SOL price further. Kamino's partial-liquidation design limits the per-event impact, but a 2024 SOL drawdown stress-tested the system and produced visible APY spikes on USDC borrow as utilization jumped. JLP-Multiply carries an additional correlation risk: JLP's yield depends on Jupiter perp traders losing money in aggregate, which historically holds but is not guaranteed in any single quarter. Read the per-asset risk parameters in the docs before opening any leveraged position.
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Three user profiles dominate Kamino's deposits: passive USDC yield seekers using Lend, SOL holders running leveraged liquid-staking loops through Multiply, and traders using JLP-Multiply as a higher-yield alternative to stablecoin farms. A smaller set uses Liquidity vaults for managed CLMM exposure without touching Orca or Raydium directly.
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For a USDC depositor, Kamino offers Solana-native yield with risk parameters comparable to the largest centralized lending venues. For a SOL holder, jitoSOL-Multiply at 2–3x leverage gives a roughly 12–20% net APY in normal markets, against a clear liquidation price the user can see in the UI. For a yield trader, JLP-leveraged-loops have produced some of the highest sustained APYs in Solana DeFi, with the caveat that JLP itself is a basket exposure (SOL, ETH, BTC, USDC, USDT) that moves with crypto beta. Settling into and out of these positions onchain — across Solana and any chain the user funds from — is where stablecoin-payments infrastructure like Solana DeFi rails and stablecoin bridges become operationally relevant.
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Most Kamino deposits start as USDC sitting on another chain — Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, or a custodial venue. Eco exists to make that funding step trivial: a USDC balance on any supported chain can be routed into Solana in one transaction, then deposited into Kamino, Drift, Jupiter, or any other Solana protocol. The user sees a single intent ("deposit USDC into Kamino"); Eco handles the bridge, the chain switch, and the final program call.
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This article cross-references Kamino's official documentation, on-chain TVL data from DeFiLlama, and the protocol's public token and governance disclosures. Risk and product mechanics are verified against the Kamino docs and audit reports. Comparison data for Solend and MarginFi is drawn from each protocol's own documentation and DeFiLlama TVL snapshots. TVL figures and APYs change continuously — readers should verify current numbers on DeFiLlama before sizing positions.
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