Solana-based lending protocol Kamino has appointed Michael Weisz, co-founder of Yieldstreet, now called Willow Wealth, as its new chief executive officer. The leadership change is part of Kamino's push to build a New York-based operation and expand its U.S. business around institutional credit and tokenized real-world assets.
Weisz brings more than two decades of fintech and private markets experience. Under his leadership, Yieldstreet deployed more than $6 billion and served over 500,000 individual investors, working alongside firms including Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, KKR, Ares, Fortress and StepStone. Kamino said Weisz will oversee U.S. expansion, work with institutional asset managers and financial platforms, and assemble a New York team spanning finance, product, legal, compliance and business development.
Kamino is evaluating roughly 20,000 square feet of office space in New York City and plans to recruit a chief financial officer and head of legal. “Being in New York puts us at the intersection of the asset managers, distribution platforms and institutional capital that will define the next phase of on-chain finance,” Weisz said in the announcement.
The protocol remains one of Solana’s largest lending applications. DefiLlama data places Kamino’s total value locked near $1.43 billion, all on Solana, with about $1.02 billion in active loans. The company reports more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume over four years and over $20 billion in loans originated. The KMNO governance token traded near $0.025 with a market capitalization of approximately $138 million, showing little immediate price reaction.
Kamino is deepening its tokenized real-world asset lending. Its PRIME market, created with Figure Technologies and Hastra, uses yield generated by Figure’s home-equity lending business. Kamino says PRIME deposits surpassed $600 million within 107 days of launch. Forward Industries has confirmed eligible tokenized FWDI shares can serve as collateral on Kamino, while Galaxy has reported tokenized GLXY shares became available as collateral through Superstate in April 2026.
Broader Solana RWA adoption is growing but still uneven. The network holds more than $4 billion in tokenized assets across over 350,000 wallets, but credit utilization on Kamino remains thin, with total RWA and liquid staking token debt below $3 million. On the same day as the Kamino announcement, Solana activated Transaction V1 on mainnet, raising the maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes to accommodate more complex institutional activity.
Kamino’s U.S. push also arrives amid unsettled crypto policy. The company cited the GENIUS Act and congressional market-structure legislation, though the Senate voted 49-50 on Sept. 15 against invoking cloture on the CLARITY Act.
