Down from its peak, Kamino just hired a Wall Street CEO

Why did Kamino hire a Wall Street CEO now?

Kamino spent four years building the largest lending market on Solana. On September 15, 2026, it handed the chief executive job to someone who has never shipped a smart contract.

Kamino hired a Wall Street CEO because its growth problem is now distribution and regulation, not code. The protocol named Michael Weisz — co-founder of alternative-investment platform Yieldstreet, which rebranded to Willow Wealth in late 2025 — as Chief Executive Officer, and announced a New York City headquarters to lead its U.S. and institutional expansion . The timing is not incidental: Kamino Lend's total value locked stood at $1.343 billion on the day of the announcement, well below its 2025 peak of roughly $1.9 billion .

Quick Answer: Kamino named Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz CEO on September 15, 2026, and opened a New York headquarters to court institutional capital. The hire lands with Kamino Lend's TVL at $1.343 billion — down roughly 29% from its 2025 peak near $1.9 billion — as the protocol pivots toward tokenized real-world assets.

The build-out is concrete rather than symbolic. Kamino is evaluating around 20,000 square feet of New York office space and plans to hire a chief financial officer, a head of legal, and a broader institutional team . Those are not DeFi roles. They are the functions a firm staffs when its counterparties are asset managers, custodians and regulated service providers — the audience CoinDesk described Kamino as chasing with its tokenized-asset push.

Co-founder Marius Ciubotariu, previously a senior software engineer at Bloomberg, framed the appointment as filling a specific competency gap.

Weisz understands "distribution, Wall Street, and regulation" — the areas most technology companies underestimate, — Marius Ciubotariu, co-founder, Kamino (source: Kamino press release, 2026-09)

Weisz made the same argument geographically. "New York puts us alongside the asset managers, financial platforms, regulated service providers, capital providers, and talent that will shape this market," he said in the announcement . Whether that proximity converts into balance-sheet growth is the open question the rest of this analysis works through — starting with how far Kamino actually fell.

Kamino's TVL Peak-to-Trough: The Numbers Behind the Timing

Kamino's total value locked stands at roughly $1.34 billion, down from a 2025 peak near $1.9 billion — a decline of about 29% from the high . The protocol launched on Solana in August 2022, rebranding from Hubble Protocol. Its active-loan book shows an even sharper contraction than TVL: The DeFi Report tracked active loans peaking near $1.4 billion in September 2024 before falling roughly 50% to about $700 million by early February 2026, against roughly $1.8 billion in total assets under management at that time . A New York headquarters and a fintech CEO are what a protocol does when organic, cycle-driven deposit growth stops arriving on its own.

The figures deserve their labels. DefiLlama tracks two distinct entities: Kamino Lend, the peer-to-pool lending market, and a combined Kamino page that folds in non-lending product lines. As of the September 15 announcement, Kamino Lend showed $1.343 billion TVL against $1.018 billion in active loans, $211.01 million in cumulative fees and $43.61 million in cumulative revenue, across 149 yield pools, with 1,111 active addresses and 12,997 transactions over the prior 24 hours . The combined page reads higher: $1.418 billion TVL, $249.1 million cumulative fees and $50.34 million cumulative revenue .

Source: DefiLlama, snapshot at announcement and historical peak; loan-cycle context via The DeFi Report.

Two things stand out in the mix. First, utilization is high: $1.018 billion of active loans against $1.343 billion of lending TVL means roughly 76% of supplied capital is working, so the drawdown is a deposit-base problem rather than an idle-liquidity problem. Second, the revenue run-rate is modest relative to the balance sheet. Q2 2026 protocol revenue came in at $1.84 million , against $43.61 million in cumulative lifetime revenue — a quarter that annualizes to roughly $7 million. That gap between scale and income is the commercial case for chasing institutional deposits that do not evaporate with SOL's drawdowns.

The token market has priced the retracement accordingly. KMNO has traded near $0.025 for a market capitalization around $138.5 million on roughly 5.5 billion circulating supply . At that level the token is capitalized at roughly one-tenth of the assets the protocol custodies — a discount that reflects both the fee-to-holder question and the cyclicality the TVL chart just demonstrated. Note also that CoinDesk's framing of Kamino at "roughly $1.4 billion in assets" alongside a company-supplied figure of more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume over four years mixes two different units . The $650 billion is gross flow, not deposits, TVL or AUM, and should not be read as a balance-sheet number.

Who Is Michael Weisz, and What Does He Bring to Solana DeFi?

Michael Weisz is the co-founder and former CEO of Yieldstreet, the alternative-investment platform that rebranded to Willow Wealth in late 2025 . He brings more than two decades in fintech and a distribution network built around private credit, real estate and private equity rather than around blockchains. That is the point of the hire: Kamino is buying access to the buy-side, not engineering capacity.

The résumé details matter because they define which doors open. Weisz co-founded Yieldstreet in 2015 and was appointed CEO in July 2023, after nine years co-leading the firm with fellow co-founder Milind Mehere . Under that structure the platform describes itself as the largest direct-to-consumer alternative investment platform in the United States, reporting more than 500,000 members and over $6.9 billion total invested as of May 31, 2026, across private credit, real estate, private equity, marine finance and art lending .

The capital-markets side is the more transferable credential. Yieldstreet raised over $250 million in venture and private equity funding and deployed capital alongside Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, KKR, Ares, Fortress and StepStone . Those are the counterparties that decide whether a tokenized credit market has a bid. A protocol that wants private credit, home-equity paper or commodity trade finance on its books needs someone who has already negotiated servicing agreements, fund structures and distribution terms with firms of that size — work that has no onchain equivalent.

Kamino co-founder Marius Ciubotariu, a former senior software engineer at Bloomberg, framed the appointment in exactly those terms.

"Weisz understands distribution, Wall Street, and regulation — the areas most technology companies underestimate," — Marius Ciubotariu, co-founder, Kamino (source: GlobeNewswire, 2026-09)

Ciubotariu added that pairing Kamino's credit and liquidity infrastructure with Weisz's career connecting assets, institutions and investors positions the firm to help institutions build markets that go beyond simple tokenization . Weisz, for his part, described the New York siting as deliberate rather than symbolic: "New York puts us alongside the asset managers, financial platforms, regulated service providers, capital providers, and talent that will shape this market" . The company is reportedly evaluating roughly 20,000 square feet of Manhattan office space and plans to hire a CFO, a head of legal and a broader institutional team .

Two gaps are worth flagging before reading the hire as a settled verdict. First, the announcement does not specify Ciubotariu's post-transition title, board composition, headcount targets or compensation, and The Defiant noted it was unclear whether Weisz replaces a prior CEO . Second, Weisz's track record is in a regulated, off-chain, human-underwritten business; running a permissionless liquidation engine where code executes margin calls at 2 a.m. is a different operating discipline. The relevant test is not whether he can raise capital — that history is documented — but whether the named counterparties that follow him are regulated custodians, asset managers and broker-dealers, or simply more protocol-level integrations.

How Kamino Compares to Aave and Morpho on Solana Lending Scale

Kamino is a mid-tier lending protocol by capital, not a category leader: a February 2026 comparison put Aave above $50 billion in TVL with $21 billion in active loans and Morpho at $8.8 billion TVL with $3.5 billion in active loans, against Kamino's roughly $1.8 billion at about 39% utilization . That gap — roughly 28x to Aave — is the structural context for the New York hire. DefiLlama ranked Kamino Lend #7 among lending protocols with 2.7% of a $50.165 billion category .

Being the largest lender on Solana and a mid-table name in global DeFi lending are simultaneously true. Kamino's dominance is chain-scoped: it accounted for 82.6% of tokenized stock lending on Solana, roughly $31 million of about $53 million in network tokenized-stock collateral as of late July 2026 . Aave and Morpho draw their balances primarily from Ethereum and its L2s, where stablecoin float and institutional custody rails have had years longer to accumulate. The comparison therefore measures two different addressable pools, not two competitors fighting over the same deposits.

The September 2026 row is the one worth pausing on. DefiLlama showed Kamino Lend at $1.343 billion TVL against $1.018 billion in active loans, alongside $211.01 million in cumulative fees and $43.61 million in cumulative revenue; the combined Kamino page, which folds in non-lending product lines, showed $1.418 billion TVL, $249.1 million cumulative fees and $50.34 million cumulative revenue . Deposits fell from the February snapshot while borrowing did not, which pushed effective utilization well above the ~39% level and above where Aave and Morpho were running. Higher utilization means a more productive book per dollar deposited — and thinner liquidity buffers if withdrawals cluster.

Headline numbers also need their labels attached. CoinDesk placed Kamino at roughly $1.4 billion in assets while noting the company's claim of more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume over four years . Those two figures are not comparable: the first is a stock of capital, the second a company-supplied gross-flow tally that counts every deposit, borrow, repayment, swap and liquidation. Gross flow is not deposits, not TVL and not AUM, and it cannot be benchmarked against Aave's or Morpho's balance-sheet figures.

Usage density gives a third reading, independent of capital. DefiLlama recorded 149 yield pools, 1,111 active addresses over 24 hours and 12,997 transactions over the same window — roughly 11.7 transactions per active address per day, a ratio that reads as automated or high-frequency positioning rather than passive deposits. Against that, Q2 2026 protocol revenue of $1.84 million and a KMNO market capitalization near $138.5 million on roughly 5.5 billion circulating supply at about $0.025 size the business honestly: real throughput, modest monetization. Closing the gap to Morpho, let alone Aave, requires deposits that a retail Solana user base has not supplied — which is precisely the argument for recruiting from Wall Street rather than from DeFi.

What Is Kamino's Institutional and RWA Product Lineup?

Kamino's institutional lineup is a six-product build-out announced in its governance post "The Next Chapter" on December 12, 2025: Fixed Rates, Borrow Intents, Off-Chain Collateral, Private Credit, an RWA DEX and BuildKit . Each targets the same gap — making real-world and off-chain assets borrowable rather than merely tokenized. Off-Chain Collateral, built with Chainlink and integrating Anchorage Digital, lets custodied assets back onchain borrowing, with the Solana Company as the first pilot borrower . Through 2026 the protocol layered on isolated markets, institutional yield vaults, BTC-backed borrowing and an August 2026 Commodity Yield vault seeded with $25 million of USDC capacity to finance real-world commodity trade .

The largest of these by deposits is Kamino PRIME, developed with Figure Technologies and Hastra, which accepts Figure's blockchain-based home equity lines of credit as collateral. PRIME passed $600 million in deposits within 107 days of launch . That single product represents a meaningful share of the roughly $1.4 billion in assets CoinDesk attributes to the protocol — a concentration worth noting, because it means Kamino's RWA thesis currently rests heavily on U.S. residential credit performance rather than on a diversified collateral book.

The commodity and equity markets are smaller but structurally instructive. A PAX Gold market went live July 28, 2026, curated by Steakhouse Financial, letting users supply PAXG to borrow USDG in an isolated market at 75% maximum loan-to-value and an 80% liquidation LTV . Superstate's Opening Bell brought Nasdaq-listed Forward Industries (FWDI) shares onchain as collateral for verified investors borrowing USDC, and Galaxy tokenized equity is listed alongside it .

Tokenized equities are where Kamino's head start is clearest. In July 2025 it became the first major borrow/lend protocol to onboard tokenized stocks as collateral, launching an xStocks market under its v2 architecture — SPL tokens backed 1:1 by custodied shares, priced through Chainlink data standards, beginning with Apple (AAPLx) . By late July 2026 that lead had compounded: Kamino Lend accounted for 82.6% of tokenized stock lending on Solana, roughly $31 million of about $53 million in network tokenized-stock collateral . Dominant share of a $53 million market is dominance of a small market — but it is the category most likely to scale if U.S. market-structure rules land.

Retail distribution was not abandoned in the process. An August 19, 2026 Solana Mobile integration embedded a USDC Earn Vault directly in the Seeker device with no minimum, no cap and no lockup, charging a 0.25% annual management fee and holding roughly 5% of deposits liquid for withdrawals . Read together, the lineup describes a protocol trying to be collateral-agnostic plumbing: mortgages, gold, equities, commodities and custodied assets routed into the same overcollateralized lending engine, with curators and oracle providers handling the parts smart contracts cannot verify on their own.

Has Kamino's Zero-Bad-Debt Record Actually Held Up?

Kamino's zero-bad-debt claim has held up in the data published so far, but it has only been tested against market volatility — not against a full credit cycle in real-world collateral. Bad debt in lending is the shortfall left when a borrower's collateral liquidates for less than the outstanding loan, leaving the pool short. Kamino's September 2026 release cites approximately $20 billion in loans originated, zero bad debt across all market cycles, zero security incidents and more than 30 independent audits . The protocol's risk documentation puts the start date at November 2023 and lists stress events through February 5–6, 2026 with $0 in bad debt .

The figures moved materially in nine months, which is itself worth noting for anyone tracking the claim over time. Kamino's December 12, 2025 governance post, "The Next Chapter," cited more than $16 billion originated, $183 million in liquidations processed, 18 audits and three formal verifications . Nine months later the origination figure had grown by roughly $4 billion and the audit count had nearly doubled . The two disclosures are not directly comparable line-for-line — the later release does not restate liquidation volume or formal verification counts — so readers comparing them should treat the pair as two snapshots with different reporting scopes rather than a continuous series.

Here is the distinction that matters for the institutional pivot. The $183 million in liquidations processed through December 2025 was almost entirely crypto collateral: SOL, stablecoins and liquid staking tokens that trade continuously, price transparently and can be sold into deep onchain liquidity within seconds . An automated liquidation engine is well suited to that job. The collateral now entering the system behaves differently:

• Tokenized HELOCs (Kamino PRIME): home equity lines of credit carry servicing obligations, foreclosure timelines measured in months and borrower credit performance that no oracle reports in real time. PRIME passed $600 million in deposits within 107 days of launch .
• Tokenized gold (PAXG): the market went live July 28, 2026 at 75% max LTV and 80% liquidation LTV, curated by Steakhouse Financial — conservative parameters, but redemption depends on the custodian honoring the claim .
• Tokenized equities: shares such as Forward Industries (FWDI) via Superstate's Opening Bell stop trading at the closing bell and gap on Monday opens, while the onchain loan against them never closes .

Each of these introduces legal, custody and servicing dependencies that sit outside the smart contract. A liquidation engine can force-sell a token; it cannot compel a custodian to release underlying shares, accelerate a foreclosure, or resolve a jurisdictional dispute over who owns the claim. That gap is structural, not a flaw in Kamino's code — and it is precisely why the hire of a CEO with institutional and regulatory experience follows the RWA build-out rather than preceding it. The honest read for anyone sizing exposure: the zero-bad-debt record is real and audited, but its predictive value for RWA-collateralized lending is limited until the newer markets have run through a credit downturn, not just a price drawdown.

Is the U.S. Regulatory Tailwind Kamino Is Betting On Actually Here?

Partly. Three of the four pillars Kamino cites in its September 2026 announcement are already in force: the GENIUS Act became law in July 2025, the SEC rescinded SAB 121 by issuing SAB 122, and the OCC and Federal Reserve clarified how they supervise banks' digital-asset activities . The fourth — a federal market-structure regime — is not. That gap is the difference between a custodian being able to hold tokenized collateral and a protocol knowing which regulator governs the lending market built on top of it.

The missing piece is the CLARITY Act, the Senate Banking Committee's market-structure bill. As of mid-September 2026, CoinDesk reported the bill's odds had fallen after Republicans rejected Democrats' counter-proposal . Put plainly, the specific tailwind Kamino's institutional thesis leans on is not yet law, and its timeline is now less predictable than it looked earlier in the year.

What the enacted changes do and do not deliver is worth separating:

• GENIUS Act (law, July 2025) — establishes a federal framework for payment stablecoins. Relevant to Kamino because USDC and USDG denominate much of its borrowing, including the PAX Gold market's USDG borrow leg .
• SAB 122 (replaces SAB 121) — removes the balance-sheet treatment that made custodying digital assets punitive for banks. This is what makes a custody partner like Anchorage Digital viable inside an Off-Chain Collateral flow .
• OCC and Federal Reserve guidance — clarifies supervisory treatment for bank digital-asset activity, lowering the internal-approval friction for a regulated counterparty to engage at all.
• CLARITY Act (pending) — would settle SEC-versus-CFTC jurisdiction over tokenized assets and the venues that lend against them. Until it passes, a tokenized equity market such as the xStocks or Superstate FWDI collateral listings operates under case-by-case interpretation rather than codified rules .

There is a parallel disclosure gap on the corporate side. The announcement does not specify co-founder Marius Ciubotariu's post-transition title, board composition, headcount targets or compensation, and The Defiant noted it was unclear whether Weisz replaces a prior CEO . Kamino has said it plans to hire a CFO and a head of legal and is evaluating roughly 20,000 square feet of New York office space , but a lease and two open roles are stated intent, not a governance structure an institutional allocator can diligence.

For traders sizing KMNO or protocol exposure, the practical test is sequencing: enacted stablecoin and custody rules are enough to onboard collateral, but the absence of market-structure law caps how much regulated capital can commit. Watch for named counterparties and disclosed governance rather than legislative headlines — those arrive first.

What to Watch Next in Kamino's Institutional Pivot

Three measurable markers will show whether Kamino's institutional pivot is working, and none of them is the CEO announcement itself. The first is balance-sheet recovery: Kamino Lend sat at $1.343 billion TVL with $1.018 billion in active loans at the time of the appointment, against a 2025 peak near $1.9 billion . If PRIME, the PAXG market and xStocks collateral genuinely add new deposits rather than rotating existing ones, that gap should close on the combined protocol page — currently $1.418 billion . PRIME's $600 million in deposits within 107 days of launch is the cleanest test case to track .

The second marker is credit performance under RWA collateral. Kamino's claim of zero bad debt across roughly $20 billion originated and 30-plus audits was earned on crypto collateral with continuous onchain pricing . Home equity lines of credit, tokenized gold at 75% max LTV and 80% liquidation LTV, and Nasdaq-listed equity shares behave differently: they price on schedules, settle through custodians, and can be legally contested . The record only becomes evidence once a full credit cycle passes through those markets.

The third is whether the New York build-out produces disclosure. Kamino has said it is evaluating roughly 20,000 square feet of office space and hiring a CFO and head of legal . Within two to three quarters, that should convert into named custodians, asset managers and broker-dealers with disclosed balances — not more protocol integrations. The announcement still omits Marius Ciubotariu's post-transition title and board composition .

For KMNO holders — roughly $138.5 million in market capitalization on about 5.5 billion circulating supply, against $1.84 million in Q2 2026 protocol revenue — the base case is a clearer strategy and real distribution access, paid for with legal, oracle, custody and servicing dependencies that onchain liquidation engines cannot price . The concrete takeaway: treat the next two DefiLlama TVL prints and the first disclosed institutional counterparty as the decision points. Until one of those moves, this is a hiring announcement, not a re-rating.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Kamino's new CEO?

Michael Weisz is Kamino's Chief Executive Officer, named on September 15, 2026 . He co-founded the alternative-investment platform Yieldstreet in 2015, served as president, and was appointed its CEO in July 2023 after nine years co-leading the firm with co-founder Milind Mehere . Yieldstreet rebranded to Willow Wealth in late 2025 and reports more than 500,000 members and over $6.9 billion total invested as of May 31, 2026 . Kamino is pairing the appointment with a New York City headquarters and plans to hire a CFO, a head of legal, and a broader institutional team . The announcement does not state whether Weisz replaces a prior CEO, nor does it specify co-founder Marius Ciubotariu's post-transition title or board composition .

How much has Kamino's TVL fallen from its peak?

Kamino Lend's total value locked stands at $1.343 billion against a 2025 peak near $1.9 billion, a decline of roughly 29% . Active loans tell a sharper story: The DeFi Report tracked active loans peaking near $1.4 billion in September 2024 before falling roughly 50% to about $700 million by early February 2026 . At the same reading, DefiLlama showed $1.018 billion in active loans, $211.01 million in cumulative fees, $43.61 million in cumulative revenue, 149 yield pools, 1,111 active addresses over 24 hours and 12,997 transactions over 24 hours; the combined Kamino page, which includes non-lending product lines, showed $1.418 billion TVL . Read scale figures with their labels attached: CoinDesk cites Kamino's claim of more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume over four years, which is gross flow, not deposits, TVL or assets under management .

How does Kamino compare in size to Aave and Morpho?

Kamino is roughly an order of magnitude smaller than Morpho and nearly two orders smaller than Aave. A February 2026 comparison put Aave above $50 billion TVL with $21 billion in active loans and Morpho at $8.8 billion TVL with $3.5 billion in active loans, against Kamino's approximately $1.8 billion at about 39% utilization . DefiLlama ranks Kamino Lend #7 among lending protocols, at 2.7% of a $50.165 billion category . Kamino's differentiation is positional rather than volumetric: it is the largest lending and liquidity protocol on Solana, and it accounted for 82.6% of tokenized stock lending on that network — roughly $31 million of about $53 million in tokenized-stock collateral as of late July 2026 . Q2 2026 protocol revenue was reported at $1.84 million .

What is Kamino PRIME?

Kamino PRIME is a lending market built with Figure Technologies and Hastra that accepts Figure's blockchain-based home equity lines of credit as collateral, letting a real-world credit instrument back onchain borrowing . It surpassed $600 million in deposits within 107 days of launch, making it the largest single component of Kamino's real-world-asset lineup . PRIME sits alongside other RWA markets: a PAX Gold market went live July 28, 2026, curated by Steakhouse Financial, allowing users to supply PAXG and borrow USDG in an isolated market at 75% maximum loan-to-value and 80% liquidation LTV ; Superstate's Opening Bell brought Nasdaq-listed Forward Industries (FWDI) shares onchain as collateral for verified investors borrowing USDC; and a Commodity Yield vault launched in August 2026 with $25 million of initial USDC capacity to finance real-world commodity trade .

Has Kamino ever had bad debt?

Kamino states $0 bad debt since November 2023, across the stress events listed in its risk documentation through February 5–6, 2026 . Its September 2026 release cites approximately $20 billion in loans originated, zero bad debt across all market cycles, zero security incidents and more than 30 independent audits; the December 2025 governance post had cited $16 billion-plus originated, $183 million in liquidations processed, 18 audits and three formal verifications . Two qualifications matter. First, these are self-reported protocol figures, not audited financial statements. Second, the record was set almost entirely on crypto-native, liquid collateral where onchain liquidation engines can act in seconds; it has not yet been tested through a full credit cycle on home equity lines of credit, tokenized equities, commodities or private credit, where recovery depends on legal enforceability, custody and servicing rather than automated liquidation .

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