Kamino Finance's v2 money markets on Solana are a big deal, and they're moving fast

Kamino's rise in the PT lending space has been especially remarkable. The platform has swiftly moved past its rivals Drift and Loopscale in PT deposits, having ended the last quarter with $28 million in deposits, to Drift's $11.7 million and Loopscale's $9 million in deposits.

Kamino Finance's v2 money markets on Solana have made a huge impact with their rapid deployment and enduring popularity.

As the premier destination for borrowing against principal tokens (PTs), Kamino's markets are also fetching an impressive amount of liquidity. While this occurrence is primarily driven by user demand, it also speaks to Kamino's role in facilitating some of the more interesting and sophisticated DeFi strategies being deployed today.

In the days following the launch, the platform witnessed a staggering $150 million in total liquidity supplied across its lending markets and $60 million borrowed from them. These lending products—derived from Kamino's lending market structures and pathing—are clearly in demand and being embraced even stronger and faster than anticipated. It is hard to underscore how impressive this is and what a strong signal it sends when happening almost immediately post-launch.

PT Lending Surges, Kamino Leads the Pack

Kamino's rise in the PT lending space has been especially remarkable. The platform has swiftly moved past its rivals Drift and Loopscale in PT deposits, having ended the last quarter with $28 million in deposits, to Drift's $11.7 million and Loopscale's $9 million in deposits. So, despite being the third entrant into this market niche, Kamino has already moved into the lead. This is a clear signal of not just user migration but also strong preference.

The driving force behind this growth is the Exponent Finance PT market, which permits users to take out loans pegged to the price of SOL against restaked tokens. Only recently assembled in the Solana ecosystem, restaked tokens are a kind of liquid collateral that can be put to work in DeFi. Exponent's market—in effect, a lending protocol—had attracted $17 million in deposits by mid-August and was making use of nearly $11 million of that in the form of loans.

The high returns make the whole thing very tempting indeed. As demand for borrowing keeps going up, the annual percentage yield (APY) that you can earn as a supplier of Solana (SOL) has shot up to an astonishing 15 percent. That is obviously drawing a lot of new capital into the ecosystem, and the total amount of SOL that is being supplied to this protocol has now hit $12.2 million. That's obviously a pretty good indicator of confidence in the Solana Strategy and the overall platform infrastructure.

SyrupUSDC Finds Traction via Kamino

One more main reason for Kamino's rapid growth is its association with Maple Finance. Maple has just brought its SyrupUSDC product onto Solana, and Kamino is serving as its go-to-market platform. Since the launch on June 5, deposits into the SyrupUSDC market have topped $25 million. That is an incredible figure, and it means that more than half of the entire SyrupUSDC token supply on Solana is now in the Kamino platform.

This market has become particularly appealing to users looking for yield opportunities using stablecoins. The platform backs a $500,000 in incentives, and offers a 6.6% APY for SyrupUSDC suppliers. For a product offering borrowing costs between 2% and 3.75%, it is hard to see how this is anything other than a profit center for yield farmers using leveraging strategies like looping and carry.

Kamino's infrastructure makes it possible to have lending markets that are effectively isolated. They allow you to do these cool DeFi things without the risk that some problem on a different part of the DeFi universe is going to affect you. This is modular finance, and it's something that Kamino's users seem to be into.

1/ The launch of @KaminoFinance v2 has shown strong demand out of the gate, with over $150M supplied and $60M borrowed across a variety of new markets.

Exponent PTs: $17M depositedSyrupUSDC: $25M depositedMarinade mSOL: $44M deposited

And more🧵 https://t.co/qr8cqRAfEi

— Blockworks Research (@blockworksres) June 10, 2025

A New Standard for DeFi Lending on Solana

Kamino's rapid uptake of the v2 lending platform is a big event in Solana's DeFi world. Why exactly? Because it draws a ton of liquidity to lots of new markets.

Liquidity moats are beginning to dominate the PT markets and fixed-yield strategies, and Kamino is doing something quite brilliant: It is deliberately positioning itself as more than just a borrowing and lending platform. And in fact, that's happening quite naturally as the protocol finds itself at the very forefront of what's happening in Solana DeFi. Kamino serves as a launchpad for token issuers, allowing them to do all sorts of efficient market-entry tricks—most notably, large-scale, on-chain