Kamino Finance is a Defi lending and borrowing protocol launched by Hubble Protocol on August 30, 2022, on the Solana blockchain. Kamino exists on the Solana blockchain as a sophisticated Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker (CLMM) optimizer. At the onset, it partnered with the popular decentralized exchange (DEX), Orca, a platform for buying crypto on Solana. Kamino uses three main features - "Auto-swap," "Auto-compound," and "Auto-rebalance" - to eliminate manual intervention on investments. This relieves the concern of having to constantly buy, sell, and reinvest your assets, on the user-end.

Crypto assets are deposited by users into vaults, which are then used to provide liquidity to specific trading pools. Users who provide liquidity to the available trading pools earn fees from trading activity. Returns on provided liquidity are immediately auto-compounded and re-invested into the pool to maximize returns to the user. Kamino’s lending utility at the time of writing has $514 million in total value locked (TVL) and may be considered a direct competitor to Margin Finance, a protocol providing similar services on Solana, which has a TVL of $631 million.

Kamino recently announced that it will take its on-chain snapshot on March 31 ahead of its token airdrop for eligible early supporters, to be distributed in April. At launch, 10% of Kamino’s 10 billion total supply will enter circulation. The token-sharing mechanism is linear, which means it is based on points users have accumulated over time. A user is entitled to 1% of the airdrop allocation if they own 1% of all points generated.

How to Earn Kamino Tokens ($KMNO) Through Participation

1. Head over to the Kamino website: app.kamino.finance

2. Connect your Solana wallet containing some SOL or other approved tokens (you can buy these on exchanges like Binance, Kraken, and Coinbase).

3. You can lend or borrow crypto in the "Borrow/lend" section, add liquidity to various pools in the "Liquidity" section, and even try out their leverage trading and "Multiply" vault options.

4. Season 1 of the airdrop is happening soon, with a snapshot of eligible users to be taken on March 31st, 2024. To qualify for the Season 1 airdrop, participate in the Kamino ecosystem by trading and contributing to the available liquidity pools. In return, users earn Kamino points which make you eligible for the airdrops. Tokens will be allocated based on accumulated points. The more points are accumulated, the more $KMNO tokens the individual user will receive (based on a linear system). Season 1 represents just the beginning of a series of planned airdrops by the Kamino protocol. Users are encouraged to keep using the protocol to potentially benefit from subsequent airdrops.