Solana Protocol Kamino Eyes Airdrop Following Jito Token Launch

Solana’s (SOL) fastest-growing decentralized finance protocol, Kamino Finance, will shortly launch a points program, a contributor said Thursday, a move that sets the stage for a future token airdrop.

The points program could further juice growth in what’s already become the star of Solana’s recent bounceback. Its SOL token has more than tripled since mid-October as DeFi traders return to Solana’s on-chain trading, borrowing, lending and yield-generating projects, most notably Kamino.

“Kamino’s about to start a points program,” a contributor to the project with the screen name Marky said in a Twitter Spaces Thursday. This “could well account towards a future token.”

The nature of Kamino’s points program hasn’t yet been revealed. Kamino project lead Marius George Ciubotariu did not return a request for comment.

Solana protocols this year have taken to gamifying their usage and rewarding their most loyal clients with points. Many traders expect these points will help determine future airdrop allocations and thus plan out their trading and staking and yield farming strategies to maximize their upside.

That was the case with Thursday’s JTO airdrop by Jito, a Solana-based liquid staking token protocol. Over 80% of the JTO tokens earmarked for the current distribution round are going to early protocol users depending on how many Jito points they accrued.

Kamino runs vault products that seek to maximize yields for depositors who want to provide liquidity to various Solana-based DeFi trading venues. It also is building a borrow-and-lend facility.

Its total value locked (a measurement of all the cryptocurrencies held on the platform) has grown 257% in a month, the most among Solana-based protocols with a TVL over $10 million. Kamino’s TVL sat at nearly $50 million Thursday.