Kamino Finance (Kamino) (KMNO) is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol on Solana that provides lending, borrowing, automated yield vaults, leveraged looping, and isolated real-world-asset (RWA) markets.
It supports deposits and borrowing across markets including SOL, USDC, USDT, JLP, and jitoSOL. The protocol was incubated in 2022 by Hubble Protocol, a Solana DeFi project, before spinning out as an independent project. KMNO is the protocol's native token, issued as a Solana SPL/Metaplex token with 6 decimals.
Kamino Finance combines lending, borrowing, automated yield vaults, leveraged looping, and isolated RWA markets within a single Solana protocol rather than separate point products.
It has been described as Solana's largest lending/money-market protocol by total value locked, with TVL cited around $1.72 billion in Q1 2026. KMNO captures this activity through DAO governance over risk parameters and incentives, plus an xKMNO staking program that ties fee discounts and boosted rewards to protocol usage.
KMNO is the native governance and incentive token of Kamino Finance, issued as a Solana SPL/Metaplex token.
It underpins participation in the protocol's DAO and its xKMNO staking program, which grants fee discounts and boosted rewards for active use of Kamino's lending, borrowing, and vault products, rather than serving as a purely passive holding.
KMNO has a fixed maximum supply of 10,000,000,000 tokens, with circulating supply of approximately 5.42 billion (about 54%) as of 2026-08-31.
Net emission remains mildly inflationary as vesting continues toward the fixed 10 billion cap.
KMNO launched through a community airdrop, with its token-generation event on April 30, 2024, distributing tokens based on "Kamino Points" earned during a Season 1 program.
The token's on-chain contract had been deployed earlier, on April 4, 2024. Roughly 7-7.5% of the fixed 10 billion KMNO supply was distributed at launch, with about 10% circulating initially. Kamino Finance separately raised approximately $10 million in a Seed VC round dated January 24, 2024, from investors including Solana Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Placeholder Capital, LongHash Ventures, Delphi Ventures, Faction Ventures, Foundation Capital, Hack VC, and Jump Capital.
KMNO is deployed on Solana, a high-throughput layer-1 blockchain.
Kamino Finance does not operate its own blockchain or validator set; it is a smart-contract protocol built on top of Solana's existing validator network, relying on that network to order and validate transactions.
Kamino Finance was incubated and launched in August 2022 by Hubble Protocol, a Solana DeFi project.
Hubble Protocol's founder, Marius (George) Ciubotariu, a London-based developer, is named in connection with both Hubble Protocol and Kamino's founding. Other names sometimes linked to "Kamino" in public sources belong to an unrelated company of the same name.
Kamino Finance's token-generation event is attributed to the Kamino Foundation, the entity associated with the KMNO token launch.
The underlying lending, borrowing, vault, and RWA-market protocol runs on Solana and was originally incubated by Hubble Protocol before spinning out as the independent project Kamino Finance in 2022.
KMNO holders govern the protocol through the Kamino DAO, voting on risk parameters, asset listings, treasury allocations, and incentive programs.
Governance participation can also influence revenue distribution and risk-management decisions. Staking KMNO through the xKMNO program additionally provides fee discounts and boosted rewards, linking economic incentives to governance participation.
In April 2026, Kamino introduced a "Whitelisted Reserves" security and risk-management feature, rolled out shortly after an exploit affected an unrelated Solana lending protocol.
Around the same period, MoonPay integrated Kamino Lending into its AI-powered "PayBox" product, letting eligible users manage Solana lending and collateralized borrowing through conversational AI tools. Upbit also listed KMNO for trading against the South Korean won, expanding exchange access.
Kamino Finance has undergone security review by six independent firms: OtterSec, Sec3, Offside Labs, Certora, Ackee Blockchain, and RX Security, producing 20 published security reports with zero critical vulnerabilities identified.
No major exploit of Kamino's own contracts has been recorded, though its USDC markets reached 100% utilization during Solana-wide DeFi stress in April 2026.