As DeFi matures, so do expectations around yield. Today’s lenders and LPs require reliable, data-driven benchmarks that provide true context for returns in a rapidly evolving market.
Rooted in Allez’s DeFi Dollar framework, Kamino’s bluechip benchmark delivers a transparent and objective baseline for stablecoin yields, empowering users with the clarity to assess performance, calibrate strategies, and reinforce Kamino’s position as a leader in DeFi yield optimization.
What Is a Risk-Free Rate? and Why Benchmark DeFi?
In traditional finance, the risk-free rate is the foundation for pricing assets, measuring risk premiums, and assessing investment performance. It’s typically represented by the yield on short-term government bonds such as T-bills. In DeFi, an analog to this is stablecoin lending on highly liquid, battle-tested credit protocols.
But DeFi yields carry some form of risk, whether it’s smart contract vulnerabilities, liquidity mismatches, governance exploits, or oracle failures. The closest to decentralized risk-free rate is a market average of lowest risk protocols, using well managed parameterizations, blue chip collaterals, and battle tested stablecoins as debt.
This makes it a useful baseline for comparison: providing a clear signal for users, protocols, and investors to distinguish genuine outperformance from market-wide trends. Any yield below it may be overly conservative or underperforming.
Kamino’s Bluechip DeFi Dollar Benchmark
As Kamino continues to scale its stablecoin liquidity, currently at $840m supplied and over $665m borrowed, the need to benchmark stablecoin rates to the other large players has become clear. Allez Labs and Kamino have teamed up to produce the Bluechip DeFi Dollar Benchmark, a comparison tool to aggregate rates across the top performing non-Kamino protocols in all of DeFi with respect to stablecoin supply rates.
As Kamino scales its stablecoin liquidity, benchmarking has become essential. As part of its commitment to transparency and market maturity, Kamino collaborated with Allez Labs to help design a benchmark that’s:
- Objective – Grounded in quantitative methodology and real-market rates.
- Relevant – Tailored to the protocols and assets of the same standard.
- Transparent – Fully open methodology, with public updates and disclosures.
The result is a tailored benchmark that tracks real returns from the most credible lending venues.
Methodology at a Glance
The aim of the benchmark is to accurately capture the average, low risk, yield across DeFi. To assess which of the many credit markets are included we use the following criteria for both lending protocols and stablecoins.
Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria:
- Stables with over $2b in circulating supply are included
- Protocols which are both lindy and large
- Over $2B of deposits
- Launched over 1 year ago
- Over $100m of stablecoin deposits
| Category | Inclusion Criteria |
|---|---|
| Chain | Ethereum Mainnet |
| Stablecoins | Stablecoins with over $2b in circulating supply - currently: USDC, USDT, DAI, USDS |
| Protocols | Protocols with over $1b in Stablecoin deposits - currently Aave v3, Morpho, and Maker’s Savings Rate products |
This ensures Kamino’s reference is rooted in actual capital flows and risk-adjusted yield, not just academic data aggregation or theoretical modeling.
Benchmark Rate Construction
The benchmark sources yield data from the most liquid, transparent, and risk-conscious stablecoin venues, protocols that define the current standard for safety and scale as outlined in the inclusion criteria:
- Aave v3: The dominant money market. We include supply rates for USDC, USDT, DAI, and USDS, weighted by deposit size.
- Morpho – Steakhouse USDC and Spark DAI vaults: Stakehouse USDC is Morpho’s safest collateral peer-to-peer lending vault optimized for safety and simplicity, while Spark’s DAI vault is the canonical vault for capturing sUSDS yields via lending against fixed rate (pendle) products.
- Maker’s Savings Rates (sDAI and sUSDS): The canonical passive rate for holders of DAI and it’s upgraded sister token USDS, via the Maker DSR and SSR contracts.
These rates are combined using a deposit-weighted average, giving greater influence to deeper, more active markets. This blended rate reflects what a stablecoin holder could expect to earn when supplying capital to bluechip, transparent, and prudently risk-managed venues.
Including vaults like Steakhouse’s USDC vault and concrete savings vehicles like sDAI/sUSDS ensures the benchmark captures the full spectrum of bluechip passive stablecoin strategies. It avoids noise from long-tail tokens, experimental protocols, token incentivised forks, or unstable rate mechanics.
While Kamino’s own vaults deliver industry-leading yields, they are intentionally excluded from the benchmark to preserve objectivity. Including Kamino would introduce circularity, comparing Kamino vaults to a benchmark that includes themselves.
This approach anchors Kamino’s performance reporting in the most credible and scalable rates DeFi has to offer.
Currently, the benchmark tracks over $14b in supplied liquidity, the lion’s share coming from Aave which contributes over $11.5b to the index, followed by Maker Savings Rates with $2.2b and Morpho with tracked supply of 600m.
Currently, the benchmark tracks over $14b in supplied liquidity, the lion’s share coming from Aave which contributes over $11.5b to the index, followed by Maker Savings Rates with $2.2b and Morpho with tracked supply of 600m.
Yield Trends and Kamino Outperformance
With the benchmark in place, we can assess how Kamino performs against DeFi’s most credible passive yield sources.
Average index rates and rates on Kamino have declined since their peaks in Q4 2024, and have rebounded since the April 2025 lows.
Average index rates and rates on Kamino have declined since their peaks in Q4 2024, and have rebounded since the April 2025 lows.
Kamino outperforms the index rate.
Kamino’s USDC vault has consistently outperformed the Bluechip DeFi Dollar Benchmark, in absolute yield and spread. Daily rate comparisons show that Kamino’s yields remained reliably elevated: outpacing peer protocols not just during peak activity but also in more subdued environments.
During the Q4 2024 surge, Kamino delivered excess returns of up to +5% APY, capitalizing on strong utilization and flywheel-driven growth. Even through quieter market conditions in 2025, it maintained a steady 1–2% yield premium over the benchmark. This reflects Kamino’s ability to generate sustained, risk-conscious returns, and reinforces its position as a high-performance, benchmark-beating stablecoin yield platform.
Outpacing the Benchmark with Kamino
With this benchmark in place, Kamino can push the limits for users and partners:
- Transparent Reporting: Constantly updating data with a public methodology for clarity.
- Strategic Yield Targets: Smarter yield optimization and product design.
Kamino’s benchmark builds trust, driving institutional-grade rigor in DeFi and establishing a reference point for all market participants.
Kamino is setting the standard. With robust benchmarking, ongoing improvements, and open methodologies, Kamino empowers every user to invest with confidence in the next phase of onchain finance.
Going further with the DeFi Dollar Index
The Kamino benchmark is built on top of a broader initiative: the DeFi Dollar Index, developed by Allez Labs to answer a foundational question: What’s the going rate for a stablecoin in DeFi today?
The DeFi Dollar Index tracks the TVL-weighted yield of the most prominent stablecoin based lending markets on different chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Scroll, and Solana.
For examples, users can explore the Kamino Dollar Dashboard, which features Kamino stablecoin metrics.
Looking Ahead
This benchmark is just the beginning. Allez Labs will continue assessing DeFi’s rates with:
- Solana & Cross-chain DeFi Dollars Benchmarks
- Yield Benchmarks for various assets
- Advanced dashboard visualizations
- Open-source methodologies for transparency
For product teams, treasury managers, and allocators, this benchmark offers a vital, evolving reference, anchoring yield expectations in data and best practices.
If you’re interested in developing transparent, data-driven benchmarks or optimization frameworks similar to Kamino’s, we’d love to hear from you.