Today, we are excited to introduce Gauntlet as an official vault curator on Kamino. Starting with two new Lending Vaults, Gauntlet will be contributing to Kamino across its lending products, further establishing Kamino’s position as the primary credit product on Solana.
Introducing Gauntlet
Gauntlet is one of the leading DeFi vault curators, specializing in institutional-grade DeFi yield. The team has collaborated with protocols such as Uniswap, NEAR, Arbitrum, and Morpho, to formalize risk management at scale.
At the time of writing, Gauntlet’s risk management systems optimize yield on over $2 billion in vault TVL across DeFi. In addition, Gauntlet has contributed to protocols with a combined total of over $42 billion in onchain TVL.
Gauntlet combines quantitative modeling with deep DeFi experience to design and operate lending vaults that balance yield and risk management — they are a valuable addition to Kamino’s managed-vault lending system.
Growing Kamino’s Vault Layer With Gauntlet
Gauntlet will debut on Kamino with two new Lending Vaults — SOL Balanced and USDC Prime — built on Kamino Lend V2.
Deployments into Kamino Markets will be actively curated by Gauntlet within defined mandates and guardrails, as shown in each vault interface.
- Profile: Each vault will maintain conservative risk parameters.
- Operations: Gauntlet will perform ongoing stress tests, parameter reviews, and monitoring. Any parameter changes are reviewed by Kamino’s Risk Council.
- Access: Vaults are permissionless. Anyone can supply and benefit from the vault’s realized returns.
To support launch momentum, the Gauntlet USDC Prime Vault is included in Kamino Season 4. In addition to strategy returns, depositors are scheduled to receive [TBC AMOUNT] vested KMNO per week during the program period. Read here for more info on how Kamino Season 4 works.
Each vault will maintain conservative risk parameters, following a well-defined mandate to deliver optimized, risk-adjusted yields. To fuel the launch, Gauntlet’s USDC Prime Vault will be onboarded to Kamino Season 5 (more info soon), with depositors earning vested KMNO once Season 5 kicks-off.
All Gauntlet-curated vaults are fully permissionless, enabling anyone to supply funds and get yield while benefiting from Gauntlet’s proven risk and optimization systems.
Scaling Kamino With V2
With the launch of Kamino Lend V2 in April 2025, Kamino introduced two core parts of its current credit suite:
- Market Layer. Open, permissionless infrastructure for deploying isolated markets.
- Vault Layer. A modular yield primitive that allocates liquidity across markets to optimize lending returns within risk constraints.
Via the Market Layer, assets can be onboarded in isolated risk environments, thus fully eliminating contagion risk between markets, while allowing for a far greater range of assets, and consequently more diverse risk profiles, to be serviced by Kamino’s credit products.
With the Market Layer becoming far more diverse, the Vault Layer was introduced to allow for automated lending strategies across a wide range of risk profiles. With Gauntlet onboarded, Kamino’s modular Vault Layer now includes 6 independent risk managers operating 17 vaults, across 3 core risk profiles:
- Conservative
- Balanced
- Aggressive
This profile-based vault structure lets specialized managers design and run strategies under transparent mandates and onchain controls, all accessible through the Kamino UI.
The result is a diversified lending surface where flexibility and safety co-exist. Over time, the Vault Layer aims to service profiles across the full risk spectrum, from ultra-conservative users to those with higher risk appetites.
Looking Ahead
As Kamino continues to scale, protocol resilience and user safety remain paramount. Gauntlet joins a growing group of institutional-grade risk contributors on Kamino, each helping shape Solana’s onchain credit ecosystem.
We’re proud to welcome Gauntlet to Kamino.