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What is Kamino?
6 min read · updated 25 May 2026
Kamino is one of Solana's largest DeFi platforms. Its pitch is consolidation: it bundles several things users normally juggle across separate apps — lending, borrowing, automated liquidity, and leveraged strategies — behind one account and one interface.
A quick history
Kamino started as an automated liquidity manager: a way to provide concentrated liquidity on Orca and Raydium without manually managing the position. It then expanded into a full lending market and a suite of one-click leveraged products, growing into one of the highest-TVL protocols on Solana.
The main products
- Lend & borrow. Like marginfi, deposit assets to earn yield or borrow against collateral, with floating rates set by utilisation.
- Liquidity vaults. Kamino's original product: deposit into a vault and it runs a concentrated-liquidity position for you — automatically rebalancing the price range as the market moves so the position keeps earning fees instead of drifting out of range. This removes the biggest pain of concentrated LPing.
- Multiply & leverage. Pre-packaged strategies that loop borrowing and depositing to amplify yield (for example, leveraged liquid-staking) in a few clicks instead of dozens of manual transactions.
Why people use it
Concentrated liquidity earns more fees but demands active management; leveraged yield strategies normally require many careful steps and constant monitoring. Kamino's value is automating both — packaging strategies that would otherwise be expert-only into something a regular user can deposit into. The trade-off is that you're trusting its automation and its risk parameters.
The KMNO token
KMNO is Kamino's governance token, launched after an extended points season that rewarded early users. It governs the protocol and ties into its incentive programs.
Risks to keep in mind
- Layered risk. Automated and leveraged products stack smart-contract risk on top of market and liquidation risk — more moving parts than plain lending.
- Liquidation on leveraged "multiply" positions if the market turns against you.
- Impermanent loss still applies inside liquidity vaults; automation manages the range, it doesn't eliminate the risk.
For the latest Kamino news, see the Kamino project page.
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