Kamino Expands to U.S. with New NYC Headquarters and Strategic Institutional Hires

Kamino, the largest credit protocol on the Solana blockchain, is establishing a New York City headquarters to drive U.S. institutional adoption of onchain credit. By appointing veterans from Yieldstreet and Cratejoy, the firm aims to bridge the gap between private markets and decentralized liquidity, offering asset managers a more efficient infrastructure for tokenized collateral and lending.

What was announced

Kamino has appointed Matthew Klopfer as Head of U.S. Institutional Expansion and Blake Messer as Head of Agentic Operations. Klopfer joins from Yieldstreet, now known as Willow Wealth, where he oversaw the syndication of $6 billion across more than 650 transactions. Messer, formerly the technology and operations leader at Cratejoy, will focus on building AI-powered systems to streamline deal flow and provide operational visibility. Both executives report to CEO Michael Weisz and represent the first senior hires at the company’s new New York City headquarters.

The expansion targets the growing demand for credit and liquidity infrastructure within U.S. institutional markets. Kamino’s platform allows asset managers to distribute investments across various financial platforms while enabling investors to borrow against those assets without liquidation. This infrastructure is already being utilized by Forward Industries (FWDI) and Galaxy (GLXY) as live collateral systems, while Figure’s PRIME product is also built using Kamino’s technology.

To date, Kamino has processed more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume and originated over $20 billion in loans. The company emphasizes a track record of zero bad debt across market cycles and has undergone over 30 independent audits and four formal verifications to ensure security for institutional participants, which include licensed exchanges and digital asset banks. The protocol remains fully open source, positioning itself as a transparent alternative to traditional private market credit systems that often suffer from limited liquidity and complex operational requirements.

The companies involved

Kamino is the primary credit protocol within the Solana ecosystem, positioning itself as a critical liquidity layer for real-world assets (RWA) onchain. The protocol provides the underlying infrastructure for lending and borrowing, catering to a range of institutional participants including publicly listed companies and federally chartered digital asset banks. Its open-source infrastructure is designed to handle complex financial operations with a focus on security, having avoided hacks or security incidents throughout its operational history.

The firm’s move to New York City marks a significant pivot toward traditional financial hubs, seeking to integrate decentralized finance (DeFi) mechanisms with the requirements of private market asset managers. By focusing on "agentic operations," Kamino is also aligning itself with the broader trend of integrating artificial intelligence into financial workflows to manage the legal and technical complexities inherent in connecting asset managers with onchain platforms. This strategy places Kamino at the intersection of blockchain-based credit and institutional wealth management, where it competes by offering higher transparency and lower operational friction than legacy credit providers. The protocol's ability to maintain zero bad debt through multiple market cycles serves as a key differentiator in attracting risk-averse institutional capital.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has tracked Kamino’s growing influence in the intersection of AI and decentralized finance. In September 2026, we reported that MoonPay Integrates Kamino into PayBox to Enable AI-Driven Solana Lending, a move that allowed AI agents to manage lending activities autonomously. This followed the launch of MoonPay Launches PayBox in Grok to Expand Agentic AI Payments Beyond Claude and ChatGPT, highlighting the shift toward agent-native financial operations. Additionally, Kamino’s role in the tokenized equity space was highlighted when XPlace Integrates xStocks to Enable Borrowing Against Tokenized Equities, utilizing Kamino’s infrastructure to allow users to borrow against their stock holdings without selling.

What this means

This expansion signals that the "tokenization" phase of blockchain is maturing into a "utilization" phase. For years, the industry focused on putting assets on the ledger; now, the pressure is on providing the credit and liquidity tools that make those assets productive for institutional holders. By hiring for "agentic operations," Kamino is betting that the complexity of private markets can only be solved through AI-driven automation rather than traditional manual back-office processes. This move puts traditional credit providers under pressure to modernize, as the speed and transparency of onchain lending begin to challenge legacy institutional infrastructure. The central question for the sector is whether traditional asset managers will trust decentralized protocols for their core collateral needs.