On Tuesday, Kamino appointed Michael Weisz as chief executive and announced the formation of an institutional team in New York City. The move signals a strategic shift toward unlocking lending demand for the approximately $4 billion in real‑world assets (RWAs) now residing on Solana, rather than simply tokenizing them.
Solana’s RWA Milestone and Kamino’s Next Step
Solana has already proven that RWAs can be tokenized at scale. In August, the total value of RWAs on the network surpassed $4 billion across more than 350,000 wallets. As the largest borrowing protocol on Solana, Kamino views the next phase as converting that tokenized value into continuous, productive credit demand.
Why a Yieldstreet Veteran Is Leading a Solana Protocol
Weisz co‑founded Yieldstreet (operating as Willow Wealth), where he helped expand distribution for private‑market investments. Announcing his move on LinkedIn, he stressed that tokenization is only the starting point — functioning markets also require liquidity, credit, distribution, and infrastructure. Kamino echoed the appointment on its X account:
We are thrilled to announce Michael Weisz (@WeiszM) as the new CEO of Kamino After more than a two decades in fintech & private markets, Michael joins Kamino to lead us into our next chapter of institutional growth, and expand Kamino to the US market A letter from Michael below https://t.co/FjxtkN1dvn
— Kamino (@kamino) September 15, 2026
Kamino’s institutional framework rests on four pillars: distribution, legal and compliance, asset‑manager operations, and credit and liquidity. The new Manhattan‑based team will recruit professionals from finance, law, product, compliance, and business development to sit closer to the asset managers, financial platforms, and capital providers Kamino aims to serve.
Market Size Does Not Equal Market Utility
Despite Solana’s impressive RWA headcount, trading activity and credit availability remain limited. For the one‑year period ending August 18, Solana accounted for 32% of on‑chain RWA spot trading and 47% of all RWA transactions, yet held only 12% of total RWA market capitalization. In dollar terms, Solana processed $14.7 billion of the $46 billion total volume. The median RWA trade on Solana was $29 versus $70 on other chains, and BlackRock’s $741 million BUIDL fund executed zero trades on the network.
A July FinTech journal study on Ethereum‑based RWAs reached a similar conclusion: tokenization alone does not create liquidity, and higher asset values do not guarantee greater trading activity. Because that research focused on Ethereum, the comparison with Solana is directional rather than direct.
Galaxy Research framed the disconnect succinctly:
“Capability now runs ahead of adoption, and H2 2026 will test whether that gap closes.” — Galaxy Research
According to Galaxy, much of Solana’s tokenized value remains idle, and lending markets have yet to transform the growing asset pool into sustainable loan demand.
The Figure Test Case and Kamino’s Own Data
The clearest early example is PRIME, a liquid‑staking product linked to an on‑chain lending framework used by Figure. In December 2025, Figure launched an RWA consortium on Solana with Kamino as its exclusive on‑chain credit and lending partner. Figure claims to have issued over $19 billion in on‑chain loans and to control 70% of the RWA private‑credit market. PRIME generates yield from pools that include Figure’s home‑equity loans, tying returns directly to real borrower cash flows.
Yet Kamino’s August figures reveal how far credit utilization has to go. RWAs made up 17.2% ($426.1 million) of Kamino Lend supply, while total RWA and liquid‑staking‑token debt stayed below $3 million. PRIME also recorded $13.6 million in net outflows, and ONyc surpassed it as the top RWA asset by supplied value.
Chart: Solana RWA Activity vs Credit Use – Kamino Supply, Debt and PRIME Outflows
A Capacity Upgrade Underneath the Pitch
Solana’s infrastructure is evolving to support more complex institutional workflows. On Tuesday, the network activated Transaction V1 on mainnet, increasing the maximum transaction size from 1,232 to 4,096 bytes — roughly 3.3 times more capacity, according to Cryptopolitan. This extra room allows complex instructions, larger multisig operations, and proof‑heavy workloads to fit into a single atomic transaction instead of being split across multiple transactions.
Greater capacity alone does not guarantee adoption. Kamino’s real test is whether asset managers, lenders, and borrowers begin routing meaningful credit through Solana. Closing that gap is precisely the challenge Michael Weisz has been brought in to solve.
