Introduction
Kamino is the biggest lending and market-making protocol in Solana, with a market size of $1.7B, over $1B in cumulative debt issued to ~350k wallets, and over 60% lending market share.
In this document, we introduce our strategy for the next phase of the protocol’s growth: Kamino’s Road to $10B.
The Road to $10B plan encompasses every aspect of Kamino’s growth into a DeFi powerhouse. We have identified 4 core pillars that, together, aim to rapidly expand Kamino’s user base, revenue streams, and mindshare, while growing the role of KMNO and forming a vibrant governance system.
This strategy is presented as a vision document to the Kamino community and will eventually go live as Kamino’s first official governance vote. We heavily encourage community feedback on this vision document. Collaboration between the community and core contributors will be Kamino’s modus operandi moving forward.
Introducing the Core Pillars
Kamino is now firmly established as the most trusted lending protocol in Solana, with the largest liquidity and user base, the widest feature set, and the most sophisticated risk management.
Kamino’s Road to $10B will position the protocol to capture the bulk of the value generated on Solana in the coming years. The plan consists of 4 core pillars, each of which will uniquely contribute to the success of Kamino.
These pillars are:
- Products: Evolve Kamino Lend into a powerful and secure Lending primitive, enabling new and unique use cases for all Solana DeFi builders to explore
- Community: Kamino’s products will attract the most users. These users will be rewarded for taking ownership & collaborating with the core contributors to fuel Kamino’s growth
- KMNO: KMNO will be the resource at the core of Kamino’s product and governance. KMNO holders will chart the course on the Road to $10B
- Revenue: Kamino will capture the lion’s share of value in Solana, and use it to fuel further growth. More value leads to more growth, leads to more value. All the way to $10B and beyond
Each pillar fuels the other in a circular motion, creating a flywheel that continues to accelerate until Kamino reaches escape velocity.
Below we break down what each pillar entails, and how it will push Kamino towards $10B. Following this proposal, a series of individual proposals will follow, introducing various initiatives that address each of the core pillars.
Before we get into the details on how Kamino will reach $10B, we should clarify why $10B is the target, and why it matters to you as a user, community member, and KMNO holder.
Why $10 Billion?
We have been building on Solana since 2021, and we believe that, right now, Solana is at the cusp of a breakout growth phase, with greater institutional inflows, a frighteningly large wave of retail, and a new generation of builders.
$10B is roughly 10x from where we are now, and it’s an important milestone at which we believe:
- Kamino evolves beyond the largest Solana DeFi protocol, to powering at-scale economic activity
- Kamino will have built a strong base of loyal community members and active governance participants
- Kamino’s product & security-first approach will have passed the test of time and adversity
- Revenue will enable the protocol to thrive beyond the current cycle; funding community projects, hiring community members, and developing more products
We believe that, at the end of the Road to $10B, Kamino’s will have reached breakout velocity, with each pillar: product, community, KMNO and revenue circularly feeding into one another to keep this momentum going.
Product. Community. KMNO. Revenue.
Each of the four core pillars complements the other in achieving one singular goal: Pushing Kamino to $10B of useful TVL.
Product
First and foremost, Kamino needs to continue building and shipping valuable products that address user needs and retain user trust. What brought us here is our commitment to security and outstanding UX.
Credit on Solana is currently centered around large, ‘monolithic’ borrow-lend pools. And, while Kamino has grown to a billion dollar protocol using the pool model, we believe that alternative approaches to credit and lending can offer numerous benefits.
Kamino Lend V2
Kamino Lend V2 will introduce modular lending to Solana, and evolve Kamino Lend into a more powerful, open lending primitive. V2 will enable a wide range of new products and position the protocol to serve novel and exciting use cases like RWAs, P2P, Orderbook Lending and add step change enchancements to the risk engine.
V2 is being developed on top of the battle-tested, open-source V1 codebase. The V1 codebase remains the main building borrowing and lending layer for V2. Having undergone 10 external audits and close to one year on mainnet without incidents or bad debt, we are confident in developing a new primitive on top of the existing infrastructure.
Kamino Lend V2 will be an all-encompassing Lending primitive, and will underpin a rich and diverse product ecosystem, enabling any builder to leverage Kamino’s robust smart contracts and deep liquidity. Simply put, with the introduction of V2, there will be no need for alternative lending solutions on Solana.
More details on Kamino Lend V2 will soon be released as an official temp check to the community.
New Products
Kamino is currently in discussion with various DeFi protocols that will leverage the new V2 infrastructure for unique use cases. These protocols include the Solana projects you know and use, as well as non-Solana projects that will soon be onboarded to Solana - where they will launch flagship products on Kamino Lend V2.
We will heavily invest in funding for the development of products on the V2 infrastructure. Such products are already being developed in-house, and significant resources will be spent on:
- DeFi integrations
- Integration Grants
- Hackathon Sponsorships
Grants and sponsorship applications will be available via KMNO Governance (discussed below)
Risk Management
DeFi users are extremely averse to platform risk, and rightfully so. Kamino has earned user trust by taking smart contract and market risk extremely seriously. Yet, we believe that Kamino’s risk management and resilience need to continuously improve, with better risk tooling, more extensive internal smart contract testing, and ongoing external audits.
Alongside the development of V2, Kamino is onboarding leading DeFi risk managers, who will be introduced to the community in the coming weeks. This is a critical step in growing Kamino from a single product, into a decentralized and secure product ecosystem. The vision is to establish a symbiosis where users, risk managers, and projects are in continual dialogue to explore novel and effective ways of serving user needs.
Initiatives we have planned for improved security and UX:
- External Risk dashboards
- Loan Risk Notifications
- Product Automations
- Stress testing and penetration testing
- Expanded liquidator network
- Effective Liquidation Mechanisms
- Community Education Initiatives
Community
Kamino was born in the Solana bear market—amidst black swans and catastrophe. We stuck with Solana, and Solana stuck with us. We are proud to have grown a community of extremely loyal users who love what we’ve built so far: crypto native products, for degens and power users alike, with smooth UX, and solid risk management.
Now, it’s time for us to take the next step. The Road to $10B vision is for the Kamino Community to be mobilized, participate actively in governance, and take ownership alongside the core contributors to grow Kamino’s narrative and mindshare.
The success of Kamino is as much the responsibility of the Community as it is the Core Contributors. Kamino’s product, mindshare, token, and governance simply cannot thrive without full-scale collaboration between the Contributors and the Community. This connection is critical for the Road to $10B strategy. Therefore, we will introduce:
- Regular Town Halls with Core Contributors
- Active Governance
- Kamino Governance Forum
- Community Grants
One thing is clear: Kamino simply will not reach $10B without a highly engaged community of evangelists.
Mindshare & Narrative
The tale of Solana’s rise post-FTX is one for the ages. The community rallied without end, and Solana rose from the ashes. This was neither fate nor coincidence. The gospel of a great product or ecosystem needs to be spread by a community that believes in what’s being built.
We don’t believe in “If you build it, they will come.” We need to build Kamino alongside the community and collaborate to spread Kamino’s product gospel.
Our vision is to introduce initiatives for:
- Working Groups for Kamino-focused video and written content
- Kamino University: Grants for High-Quality Educational Content
- Crafting the Kamino Narrative alongside the community
A community temp check will follow this proposal. In that temp check, we want to collaborate with you to establish Kamino’s Community Values and identify common goals that we can rally around to propel Kamino toward $10B.
KMNO
To enable the Road to $10B strategy, KMNO holders need to be fully aligned with the direction of the Kamino protocol, brand, and community.
KMNO holders are naturally aligned towards the highest good of the protocol itself—and the next step for KMNO holders is to start participating directly in protocol decision making. Thus, Kamino Governance will be introduced soon. The primary goal of governance will be to fuel the alignment between protocol and KMNO holders, and translate this alignment into valuable output via impactful protocol governance.
As we see it, governance is not only needed for the decentralization of Kamino but is also critical if the core Kamino community—KMNO holders—is to fully support the Road to $10B vision. If the protocol, contributors, community, and KMNO holders are successfully aligned, then each successful governance proposal and grant will propel Kamino further towards $10B.
Therefore, the first tangible utility of the KMNO token is governance—on this and future proposals. This initial utility opens the proverbial floodgates for the community (KMNO holders) and protocol to collaboratively explore the role of KMNO moving forward.
An official temp check to introduce governance will be released shortly after this proposal. We look forward to inviting KMNO holders to take ownership.
Revenue
After all is said and done, and the current bull cycle has run its course, it is only with sustainable protocol revenue that the Kamino product, community, and governance will continue to thrive.
Revenue growth is one of the four core pillars, as more revenue means that more resources can be poured into the development of more products, sponsorship of community initiatives, and massively grow the scope of what can be enabled by, and voted on via Kamino governance.
Incentives
As a prime example of the circular momentum created in the Road to $10B strategy, revenue can be directed towards incentives to fuel TVL growth, which means:
Revenue Growth → Incentives Increase → TVL Growth → Revenue Growth → Incentives Increase
At a certain point on the Road to $10B, the Revenue <> TVL flywheel can be locked into a perpetual positive feedback loop, pushing the protocol to and far beyond the initial $10B milestone. A recent case in which the power of incentives for protocol growth is Kamino’s PYUSD campaign, where incentives have led to $180M PYUSD inflows onto Kamino. These inflows can eventually be translated into a revenue stream as PYUSD borrows are scaled.
Beyond direct incentives, revenue growth will also lead to more impactful governance:
Governance & Grants
The further Kamino grows towards runaway revenue, the greater the scope of governance and grants can become. Our vision for Kamino Governance and Grants is not for low-impact, entertainment-value initiatives. We want Kamino Governance to fuel ambitious and forward thinking growth and product initiatives that push the boundaries of the type of projects that can be built via DAO governance.
More revenue will give the DAO more capacity to fuel larger and more ambitious projects, which in turn will lead to more product and community growth. The Road to $10B vision is for governance to grow in its impact as Kamino pushes towards the $10B milestone. Revenue will be a key factor in expaning this impact.
Conclusion
We believe that Solana is on the verge of an aggressive growth phase, and that Kamino is perfectly positioned to benefit from and facilitate this growth. The Road to $10B strategy introduced in this proposal seeks to establish Kamino as the dominant (non-staking) Solana DeFi protocol.
With the KMNO token now in the hands of a loyal user base, there is a clear route to establishing meaningful protocol governance to align token holders with the protocol’s growth. Kamino Lend V2 is in the advanced stages of development, and will grow Kamino into a powerful, open-source lending primitive. New products are being explored in collaboration with other projects, while leading DeFi risk managers are being onboarded to contribute to Kamino’s risk management.
Kamino is pushing towards escape velocity. But first, it’s time to accelerate. The Road to $10B starts here.
We look forward to your feedback on this proposal.
You guys are shipping and governance alone seems weak to me, and is not enough for me personally to continue to hold KMNO beyond this bull run.