TLDR
- Kamino, a Solana-based lending protocol with $1.4 billion in assets, has appointed Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as CEO
- Kamino is opening a New York headquarters and hiring a CFO and head of legal to target institutional clients
- The protocol is expanding into tokenized real-world assets, with its PRIME market topping $600 million in deposits in three months
- Solana’s RWA value has surpassed $4 billion, but credit utilization remains low, with total RWA debt on Kamino below $3 million
- Solana also activated Transaction V1 on mainnet, tripling maximum transaction size to better support complex institutional activity
Kamino, one of Solana’s largest lending protocols, has named Michael Weisz as its new chief executive. The move is part of a push to bring decentralized finance lending closer to Wall Street and traditional asset managers.
JUST IN: Michael Weisz joins Kamino as CEO to lead the company’s next phase of institutional expansion in the U.S.https://t.co/e1vMywMicm
— Kamino (@kamino) September 15, 2026
Weisz co-founded Yieldstreet, now called Willow Wealth, which deployed more than $6 billion alongside firms including Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, KKR and Ares. He brings experience in private-market distribution and institutional finance to the DeFi space.
Kamino holds $1.4 billion in assets and has processed more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume over four years. The protocol allows users to lend crypto assets or borrow against them.
Kamino Eyes New York for Institutional Push
The company is setting up a New York headquarters, looking at roughly 20,000 square feet of office space. It also plans to hire a chief financial officer and head of legal as it builds out its institutional team.
“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,” Weisz said.
The team will include professionals from finance, law, product, compliance and business development. The goal is to sit closer to the capital providers and asset managers Kamino wants on its platform.
Kamino is extending its lending model to tokenized real-world assets. These are traditional assets like stocks, bonds and funds that have been moved onto blockchain rails. Citi has projected the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030.
PRIME Market Shows Early Traction, But Credit Demand Lags
Kamino’s PRIME product, built with Figure Technologies and Hastra, uses Figure’s blockchain-based home equity loans as collateral. Deposits topped $600 million in roughly three months after launch.
Figure has issued more than $19 billion in on-chain loans and controls an estimated 70% of the RWA private-credit market. The partnership gives Kamino a direct link to real borrower cash flows.
Despite the headline numbers, credit utilization on Kamino remains thin. Real-world assets made up 17.2% of Kamino’s lending supply in August, or about $426 million. But total RWA and liquid staking token debt sat below $3 million.
PRIME also reported $13.6 million in net outflows in August, and a competing product called ONyc overtook it as the top RWA asset by supplied value.
Solana’s overall RWA market tells a similar story. The network holds over $4 billion in tokenized assets across more than 350,000 wallets. But the median RWA trade on Solana was just $29, compared to $70 elsewhere.
Nasdaq-listed Forward Industries and digital asset manager Galaxy also use Kamino’s infrastructure for tokenized equity and U.S. Treasury positions.
On the same day as the Weisz announcement, Solana activated Transaction V1 on mainnet. This upgrade raises the maximum transaction size from 1,232 to 4,096 bytes, giving complex institutional operations more room within a single transaction.
Galaxy Research noted that “capability now runs ahead of adoption” and said the second half of 2026 will test whether that gap closes.
Weisz’s job is to turn tokenized value into actual borrowing demand, which remains the protocol’s biggest challenge.
Stop guessing and start investing with confidence. KnockoutStocks gives you the AI insights, market intelligence, and stock research you need to spot opportunities, cut through the noise, and make smarter investment decisions — all in one powerful platform.
Sign up today and get 50% OFF full access to our premium stock picks.
Simply use coupon code SPECIAL50 at checkout to claim your exclusive discount.
Get 3 Free Stock Ebooks
Discover top-performing stocks in AI, Crypto, and Technology with expert analysis.
- Top 10 AI Stocks - Leading AI companies
- Top 10 Crypto Stocks - Blockchain leaders
- Top 10 Tech Stocks - Tech giants
