Kamino Finance Expands to Wall Street: What Changes for KMNO?

Kamino Finance, one of Solana's largest lending protocols, just named Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as CEO and opened a roughly 20,000-square-foot New York office, a clear signal it's pivoting from a crypto-native lending app toward institutional, Wall Street-facing infrastructure. 

But before assuming this automatically means more value for KMNO, it's worth understanding a specific gap the numbers reveal: Kamino's protocol revenue has fallen over 70% since its 2024 peak, and KMNO currently has no mechanism to pass any revenue back to token holders at all. Here's what's actually changing, and what isn't yet.

Key Takeaways

• Kamino named Michael Weisz, co-founder of Yieldstreet (now Willow Wealth), as CEO and is establishing a New York headquarters to pursue institutional and Wall Street partnerships, with plans to hire a CFO and head of legal.

• The expansion centers on lending against tokenized real-world assets Kamino's PRIME market, built with Figure Technologies and Hastra using blockchain-based home equity loans as collateral, gathered over $600 million in deposits within 107 days of launch.

• KMNO currently has no fee-capture mechanism, no buybacks, burns, or revenue-sharing for token holders meaning this expansion could grow Kamino's business substantially without directly benefiting KMNO unless governance changes that structure.

What Kamino Actually Announced

On September 15, 2026, Kamino Finance announced two connected moves. First, it named Michael Weisz co-founder of the alternative investment platform Yieldstreet, which has since been renamed Willow Wealth and deployed more than $6 billion alongside firms including Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, KKR, and Ares as its new CEO. 

Second, it's establishing a New York headquarters, evaluating roughly 20,000 square feet of office space, with plans to hire a chief financial officer and head of legal.

Weisz framed the move directly: "Being in New York puts Kamino at the intersection of the asset managers, distribution platforms and institutional capital that will define the next phase of on-chain finance."

This is a notable hire specifically because Weisz isn't from crypto his background is in traditional alternative investments, suggesting Kamino is deliberately recruiting outside the crypto-native talent pool to build credibility with the institutions it's now targeting.

What Kamino Actually Does

Kamino is a Solana-based lending protocol where users can deposit crypto assets to earn yield or borrow against their holdings. It's a substantial player in the Solana DeFi ecosystem, with $1.4 billion in assets and more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume processed over four years, according to the company.

The Wall Street expansion centers on extending this lending model to tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) bringing traditional financial instruments on-chain and letting investors borrow against or finance them once they're there.

PRIME: Kamino's First Real RWA Business

The clearest evidence this shift is already producing results is Kamino's PRIME market, built in partnership with Figure Technologies and Hastra. PRIME uses Figure's blockchain-based home equity loans as collateral, letting depositors earn yield backed by real-world debt rather than purely crypto-native collateral.

The results so far are genuinely significant: deposits surpassed $600 million within 107 days of launch meaning PRIME alone now accounts for more than 40% of Kamino's total $1.4 billion in assets, built from zero in roughly three and a half months.

Beyond PRIME, Forward Industries (a Nasdaq-listed Solana treasury company) and Galaxy Digital are both already using Kamino's infrastructure for tokenized equity and US Treasury positions provide additional evidence that institutional-grade usage is already happening, not just being planned.

Read Also: 3 Main Reasons to Invest in RWA Coins

The Real Question: Does This Change Anything for KMNO?

This is where the story gets more complicated than the headline suggests, and it's worth breaking down carefully.

How Kamino Actually Makes Money Today

Source: DefiLlama

According to DeFiLlama data, Kamino's revenue comes from four sources:

The trend here matters as much as the current figure: Kamino's total protocol revenue has fallen more than 70% from a peak of $36.67 million in Q4 2024 to roughly $10.69 million in Q2 2026 (gross, before payouts). 

This decline closely tracks the broader slowdown in Solana ecosystem borrowing demand Kamino's revenue has essentially been a direct function of how active Solana DeFi is overall, which is exactly the dependency the Wall Street pivot is meant to reduce.

KMNO Has No Fee-Capture Mechanism At All

This is the detail that matters most for anyone holding or considering KMNO. KMNO's current utility is limited to governance voting and staking-based point acceleration. There is currently no buyback program, no burn mechanism, and no direct revenue-sharing structure that routes any of Kamino's protocol earnings back to token holders.

Analysts have compared this directly to Arbitrum's ARB token: "revenue exists, but value capture has yet to catch up." In other words, Kamino the business can grow substantially through this Wall Street expansion while KMNO the token sees no direct, structural benefit unless governance specifically votes to change that.

KMNO's Current Valuation, By the Numbers

For comparison, Aave, a more established DeFi lending protocol, trades at a lower FDV-to-revenue multiple of roughly 15x–20x, but Aave has already implemented fee-capture mechanisms through its GHO stablecoin and Safety Module staking. 

The implication is direct: for KMNO to earn a comparable valuation re-rating, Kamino likely needs to resolve the same question Aave already has who actually receives the fees the protocol generates.

Read Also: What Are the Risks of Tokenized Real-World Assets?

What Would Actually Have to Happen for KMNO to Benefit

Based on this analysis, two specific conditions would need to be met for KMNO to genuinely re-rate as a result of this Wall Street expansion, rather than simply seeing Kamino-the-business grow while the token stays flat:

1. RWA revenue from PRIME (and similar future markets) needs to substantially exceed what traditional crypto-collateral lending currently generates proving the institutional pivot is a genuine business transformation, not just a TVL headline.

2. Governance needs to establish some form of fee capture, buyback, or burn mechanism proving that if the business does grow, token holders actually receive a share of that growth rather than the value accruing solely to the protocol treasury or equity holders.

Whether Weisz's hire leads to this kind of tokenomics reform is, per available analysis, an open and unresolved question, it hasn't been announced as part of this expansion, but a CEO with deep alternative-asset-management experience overseeing a business transition of this scale is a plausible candidate to eventually revisit it.

Why This Expansion Makes Strategic Sense Regardless

Even setting aside the token-specific question, the timing rationale is sound. Tokenization bringing stocks, bonds, and funds onto blockchain rails has become one of Wall Street's most closely watched crypto use cases, with Citi projecting the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030. 

Positioning Kamino's infrastructure to capture lending and collateral demand around that growth, rather than remaining purely dependent on crypto-native borrowing activity, is a reasonable hedge against the kind of demand slowdown that's already cut Kamino's revenue by over 70% since 2024.

Risks and Open Questions

• Revenue concentration risk remains. Even with PRIME's strong early traction, Kamino's overall revenue is still heavily tied to broader market conditions, and RWA lending introduces its own set of risks (real-world collateral valuation, legal enforceability of claims, counterparty risk with partners like Figure Technologies).

• No confirmed tokenomics changes. This article covers what's known as of the announcement; any future fee-capture or buyback proposal would need to go through Kamino's governance process and isn't guaranteed to happen or to favor token holders in any particular way.

• Institutional traction takes time to prove at scale. PRIME's $600 million in 107 days is a strong early signal, but it's still a small fraction of the broader tokenized asset market Kamino is now targeting.

To learn more about how Kamino's protocol works more broadly, Bitrue's guide on Kamino Finance on Solana covers the fundamentals, while Kamino (KMNO) safe addresses security and risk considerations in more depth. 

For more on Kamino's specific move into tokenized collateral, see Bitrue's coverage of Kamino's Superstate tokenized shares collateral launch, and for those interested in participating in the ecosystem, the Kamino Season 5 liquidity farming and KMNO rewards guide walks through current opportunities.

Read Also: Ultimate Guide to RWA Tokenization in 2026: A Rising Trend in the Financial Sector

Conclusion

Kamino's Wall Street expansion is a genuine, substantive strategic shift a credible, non-crypto-native CEO, a New York office, and an RWA lending product (PRIME) that's already gathered over $600 million in deposits within months of launch. 

That's real business progress, and it directly addresses a real problem: Kamino's revenue has fallen over 70% since 2024 as it stayed dependent on Solana-specific borrowing demand.

But "the business is expanding" and "the token captures that value" are two separate questions, and right now, KMNO has no mechanism connecting the two. Until Kamino's governance establishes some form of fee capture, buyback, or burn mechanism, this expansion is best understood as evidence the underlying protocol is maturing, not a guarantee that KMNO itself will re-rate alongside it. 

The two conditions worth watching going forward are straightforward: does RWA revenue meaningfully outpace traditional lending revenue, and does governance ever close the value-capture gap.

FAQ

What did Kamino Finance just announce? 

Kamino named Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as CEO and is establishing a New York headquarters to pursue institutional partnerships and expand its lending business into tokenized real-world assets.

Does this news directly benefit KMNO token holders? 

Not automatically. KMNO currently has no buyback, burn, or revenue-sharing mechanism, meaning Kamino's business could grow substantially from this expansion without any direct, structural benefit flowing to token holders unless governance changes that.

What is Kamino's PRIME market? 

PRIME is Kamino's real-world-asset lending market, built with Figure Technologies and Hastra, using blockchain-based home equity loans as collateral. It gathered over $600 million in deposits within 107 days of launching.

How is KMNO currently valued? 

KMNO trades around $0.025, with a market cap of roughly $130-140 million and a fully diluted valuation of $170-250 million implying an FDV-to-net-revenue multiple of roughly 27x-40x, higher than more established competitor Aave's 15x-20x multiple.

Why has Kamino's revenue declined recently? 

Kamino's protocol revenue fell more than 70% from a Q4 2024 peak of $36.67 million to roughly $10.69 million in Q2 2026, closely tracking a broader slowdown in Solana ecosystem borrowing activity a dependency this Wall Street expansion is partly designed to reduce.

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