Today kicks off the Kamino Season 4 vesting, with over 88M of KMNO vesting across 15,279 users over the next 6 months. This officially concludes Kamino Season 4.
The Season 4 vesting structure is designed to encourage long-term alignment between protocol participants — with rewards vesting on an exponential curve, and early claimants forfeiting a portion of their rewards, to be distributed to users that complete the full, 6-month vesting.
For a full overview of how Season 4 vesting works, see the final section of this article.
Let’s dive in.
Season 4 Retrospective
TL;DR
- 9,000+ unique active depositors (+400% growth)
- $750M in deposits (+820% growth)
- 88.38M KMNO earned by users
- $6M+ generated interest
- 17 active vaults operated by 8 curators
In total, participants earned 88.38M in vested KMNO rewards ($5.41M at current rates), and over $6M in interest. Thus, throughout Season 4, users earned over $11.4M, accounting for interest and Season 4 rewards.
Expressed differently, via Season 4, Lending Vault APYs were boosted by +90% on average.
Lending Vault activity was primarily concentrated in the USDC Prime, CASH Earn, and PYUSD Lend vaults, which attracted over $500M in supplied liquidity.
With the continued inflows into Lending Vaults since the start of Season 4, it’s evident that the shift to real-time, vested rewards has been well received by the market.
Vault Infrastructure and Curator Activity
Season 4 also marked a major expansion in Kamino’s vault infrastructure and curator system.
Over the course of the Season, the number of active vaults increased from 12 to 17, with new curators such as Sentora and Gauntlet joining alongside additional high-yield vaults from Steakhouse.
Kamino now counts 8 independent curators, each operating under transparent mandates and defined risk frameworks.
This expansion reflects the early stages of Kamino’s long-term goal to decentralize liquidity management, where specialized contributors manage strategies that optimize yield, maintain risk discipline, and collectively strengthen the protocol’s credit layer — while adhering to Kamino’s standards of responsible risk management
Yield optimization on Kamino is reflected in part through Vault reallocation activity, which reached unprecedented levels during Season 4.
Across all vaults, more than $175B in liquidity was actively repositioned across markets to pursue the best risk-adjusted returns, highlighting the scale of curator management and automated capital movement within Kamino’s lending layer.
This data is available for each vault at the bottom of the vault page.
Stablecoin Growth Initiatives
Season 4 played a central role in accelerating the growth of Solana’s stablecoin ecosystem.
By pairing KMNO rewards with ongoing asset launches, Kamino helped scale new assets like PYUSD, CASH, and USDG into well-established assets within its lending infrastructure.
The PYUSD Growth Initiative, developed in collaboration with Sentora, combined direct partner emissions with Season 4 Lending Vault rewards.
Through this collaboration, PYUSD deposits on Kamino surpassed $500M, establishing PYUSD as one of the fastest-growing stablecoins on Solana.
The CASH Growth Initiative, launched alongside Phantom, followed a similar path.
The CASH Earn Vault reached more than $100M in supplied liquidity driven by the combined effect of CASH incentives and KMNO rewards.
In total, over $250M in non-USDC stablecoin liquidity across PYUSD, CASH, and USDG was scaled exclusively through Kamino’s Lending Vaults during Season 4.
Season 4 Vesting
With the conclusion of Season 4, all rewards now enter a six-month vesting period starting November 13, 2025.
This system was first introduced in Season 4 to reward long-term alignment while maintaining flexibility for users who prefer to claim rewards earlier, and forfeit a portion of rewards to a Final Vesting Pool as a result.
Participants can choose to instantly claim 10% of their rewards, while forfeiting their remaining allocation, or choose to wait until vesting is completed. As the 6 month period progresses, more rewards will become available to claim early, with the forfeited amount becoming smaller. This takes place via an exponential curve.
Users who complete the full 6-month vesting period will be entitled to claim their full KMNO amount, as well as a proportional share of the Final Vesting Pool rewards.
Thus, any users claiming before the vesting end date are not entitled to any bonuses, and will forfeit a portion of their claim amount to the Final Vesting Pool, from where it will be proportionally redistributed to users who complete the full 6-month vesting.
Ultimately, this is designed to reward long-term alignment, while maintaining a measure of flexibility for users who wish to claim early.
Vesting Example
For a user that earned 10,000 KMNO in Season 4 rewards:
- Claim after 1 month → receive ~1,413 KMNO, forfeit ~8,587 KMNO
- Claim after 3 months → receive ~3,066 KMNO, forfeit ~6,934 KMNO
- Claim after 5 months → receive ~6,674 KMNO, forfeit ~3,326 KMNO
- Claim after 6 months → receive 10,000 KMNO + bonus share from forfeited rewards
The early-claim penalty decays exponentially, meaning the reduction is slow at first and gradually steepens as time progresses. This structure rewards users who remain staked throughout the full vesting period, while giving others the option to claim earlier if they wish, and forfeit their unclaimed rewards.
All claimable balances, vesting progress, and live data from the Final Vesting Pool are visible directly in the Season 4 tab.
Users can claim + forfeit at any time, or continue vesting, with live updates showing a user’s claimable KMNO, as well as the size of the Final Vesting Pool from forfeited rewards.
Final Vesting Pool Example
At the end of the 6-month vesting period, all KMNO in the Final Vesting Pool will be paid out proportionally to users who completed the full vesting period.
This proportional distribution will work as follows (numbers are illustrative):
Reward Pools
- Total KMNO Season 4 Rewards:
100 KMNO - Total Final Vesting Pool:
10 KMNO
User Season 4 Rewards
- User #1:
50 KMNO(i.e. 50% of entire S4 pool) - User #2:
30 KMNO(i.e. 30% of entire S4 pool) - User #3:
20 KMNO(i.e. 20% of entire S4 pool)
User Final Vesting Pool Distribution:
Each user will receive a share of the Final Vesting Pool according to their total share of the S4 KMNO rewards pool. Thus:
- User #1:
5 KMNO(i.e. 50% of final vesting pool) - User #2:
3 KMNO(i.e. 30% of final vesting pool) - User #3:
2 KMNO(i.e. 20% of final vesting pool)
Final Reward Amounts
- User #1:
55 KMNO - User #2:
33 KMNO - User #3:
22 KMNO
Conclusion
Season 4 is now complete, and the six-month vesting period begins today, November 13th. All participants can view and claim their vested rewards directly in the Season 4 tab of the Kamino Rewards UI.
This concludes Kamino’s first vested reward cycle and sets the foundation for the expanded incentives, now active in Season 5.