In Brief:
- Kamino launched Kamino Institutional Yield, vault infrastructure that routes on-chain deposits into real-world institutional credit markets.
- The first vault built on it, Commodity Yield, is live with an initial deposit capacity of $25 million USDC.
- Solana’s official account amplified the launch, calling it institutional-grade credit on Solana.
Kamino has opened Commodity Yield, the first vault under a new product line that connects USDC depositors to off-chain institutional credit. Initial deposit capacity is $25 million.
The line is called Kamino Institutional Yield. Kamino described it as “Purpose-built on-chain vault infrastructure connecting real-world, institutional credit markets with on-chain users.”
Say hello to institutional-grade credit on Solana via @kamino
Solana’s account reposted the announcement with a one-line comment: “Say hello to institutional-grade credit on Solana via @kamino”
The announcement post didn’t name the borrowers behind Commodity Yield, disclose a target rate, or give a tenor. It also didn’t say what happens when the $25 million fills.
A cap, not a raise
The $25 million figure is a ceiling on deposits rather than money raised. Credit vaults size capacity to the loan book they can actually deploy into, so the number describes the pipeline, not demand.
The institutional turn
This isn’t a departure for Kamino. In December 2025 the protocol rebranded and said it was becoming an infrastructure layer for institutional finance and tokenized assets on Solana, laying out six products: fixed rates and terms, a borrow intents marketplace, custodied fund borrowing with Chainlink, BTC-backed institutional credit, an RWA DEX and an embeddable developer kit called BuildKit.
Kamino’s argument then was that DeFi credit runs on floating rates set by pool utilization, which can swing from 3% to 10% overnight, while repo markets, credit lines and structured products in traditional finance run fixed. Institutions want predictable funding costs.
Private Credit Vaults came out of that push. Kamino said it spent roughly a year working with regulated financial institutions on the structure, which routes deposits to off-chain lending operations with collateral posted at qualified custodians, plus reporting and third-party audits.
Apollo and Maple have both used Kamino’s infrastructure to put credit yields on-chain. The protocol also integrates with Anchorage Digital, and in a separate arrangement with Anchorage and Solana Company built a tri-party custody model letting institutions borrow against natively staked SOL held in qualified custody.
Where the RWA book stands
Kamino crossed $1 billion in total RWA market size in February, with real-world assets making up roughly 35% of protocol liquidity. Integrations with Securitize and OnRefinance drove most of it.
Protocol TVL was about $1.5 billion in April, roughly 65% of it in lending pools and the rest in vaults. USDC supply has paid between 4% and 9% APY through 2026 depending on borrow demand.
Commodities were already on the book
Kamino listed three real-world asset markets in the space of four days in July. PAXG went live July 27, letting holders borrow against Paxos gold. AUTO followed July 29, routing depositor capital into U.S. near-prime auto loan cash flows. The oTFY market activated July 30.
oTFY is Obligate’s short-duration commodity trade finance token, up to $200 million notional. On Kamino it sits in an isolated pool where holders post it as collateral for stablecoin borrowing at up to 2.9x leverage, with Chainlink bringing NAV data on-chain. RockawayX curates that market.
Those are borrow-against markets. Commodity Yield takes USDC deposits instead. Kamino hasn’t said whether the two are connected.
Risk plumbing
Since late 2025 Kamino has run RWA tokens in fully isolated lending markets, each with its own risk parameters, LTV, liquidation thresholds, rate curves and oracles, so trouble in one market can’t reach another. Curators including Gauntlet, RockawayX, Steakhouse Financial, Re7 Labs and Allez Labs design and manage strategies on top of that.
Kamino has been through 18 security audits and four independent formal verifications of core lending functions, and runs a $1.5 million bug bounty through Immunefi.
Obligate AG, which issues oTFY, is a member of VQF, a Swiss anti-money-laundering self-regulatory organization overseen by FINMA, and a financial intermediary under the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act.
