Kamino Expands to New York to Target Wall Street Tokenization

Kamino, one of Solana’s largest decentralized lending protocols, is establishing a New York presence as it seeks to connect its onchain credit platform with Wall Street and the rapidly growing tokenized asset market.

The Solana-based DeFi protocol, which oversees about $1.4 billion in assets, named Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as CEO on Tuesday. Weisz will lead Kamino’s institutional expansion as the company searches for roughly 20,000 square feet of New York office space and prepares to hire a chief financial officer and head of legal.

Weisz previously co-founded alternative investment platform Yieldstreet, now known as Willow Wealth. The platform deployed more than $6 billion alongside major financial firms including Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, KKR and Ares.

Kamino believes a New York headquarters will provide closer access to asset managers, institutional investors and distribution platforms increasingly exploring blockchain-based finance.

Tokenization has become a major focus for traditional financial institutions, allowing assets such as stocks, bonds and investment funds to operate on blockchain networks. Citi has projected that the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030 as financial institutions pursue faster settlement, 24-hour trading and new collateral applications.

Kamino currently enables users to lend crypto or borrow against digital assets and is extending that infrastructure to tokenized real-world assets. Its PRIME lending market, developed with Figure Technologies and Hastra, uses Figure’s blockchain-based home equity loans as collateral. Kamino said deposits have surpassed $600 million within roughly three months of launch.

Nasdaq-listed Solana treasury company Forward Industries and digital asset manager Galaxy also use Kamino infrastructure for tokenized equity and U.S. Treasury positions.

Kamino said its platform has processed more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume over four years.

The New York expansion highlights how decentralized finance is moving beyond basic asset tokenization toward lending and collateral markets. By positioning itself closer to Wall Street, Kamino aims to become a key infrastructure provider connecting Solana-based DeFi, tokenized real-world assets and institutional finance.