Solana Lending in 2026: Teams, Jobs and On-Chain Credit

Lending is the quiet engine of Solana DeFi. Traders get the headlines, but every leveraged position, every staking loop and every "borrow, don't sell" move runs through a handful of credit protocols. In October 2026 that engine is changing shape fast: the big two are fighting for first place, the ambitious teams are moving to New York, and tokenised shares have just arrived as collateral.

If you want a job in Solana, or you're trying to work out where the durable money is, this is a sector worth understanding properly.

The market in one paragraph

DefiLlama puts Solana lending at about $2.5 billion in total value locked on 29 October 2026. Kamino holds about $1.26 billion and Jupiter's lending arm, Jupiter Lend, about $990 million. Everyone else is far behind: Loopscale around $86 million, Save around $79 million and Project 0 around $59 million.

That's real concentration. Two teams hold close to 90% of the market, and they earn similar fees. Over the last 30 days Kamino generated $4.49 million in fees and Jupiter Lend $4.35 million.

Honest note: TVL is down roughly 10–15% over the month for both leaders, in line with a softer market. That's not a crisis. It's a reminder that lending follows prices, and prices move.

Kamino: the New York bet

Kamino is the most interesting hiring story in Solana credit right now. On 16 October it announced a push into US institutional markets, with a new headquarters in New York and Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as CEO. It also hired Matthew Klopfer as Head of US Institutional Expansion and Blake Messer as Head of Agentic Operations, a role built around AI systems that help the team move deals faster.

The pitch is simple and, I think, right. Tokenising an asset is only step one. To be useful, that asset needs credit and liquidity, so investors can borrow against it instead of selling. Kamino says Forward Industries and Galaxy already use it as live collateral infrastructure, and Figure's PRIME product is built with Kamino. Its job posts claim more than $20 billion in loans originated.

Then on 28 October it launched the Backpack Market, which lets eligible users borrow USDC against 1:1-backed tokenised US equities from Backpack Securities. Shares as collateral on Solana is a big step, and it's exactly the kind of product traditional finance people understand straight away.

Kamino jobs and pay

Kamino's careers page lists senior New York roles, mostly hybrid with four days in the office:

• VP of Growth: $275,000–$325,000 base, plus bonus and long-term KMNO participation
• General Counsel: its first, tasked with building a legal and compliance team over 6–12 months
• Head of Business Development: owning deals with fintechs, banks, wealth platforms and asset managers
• Brand and Motion Designer: $100,000–$150,000 base, remote in North America or hybrid in New York

My read: this is a company hiring for the institutional era, not the degen era. If you've worked in private markets, fund admin, compliance or fintech BD, your experience is suddenly very relevant on-chain.

Jupiter Lend: fast, big and close behind

Jupiter Lend only launched in August 2025 and hit $500 million in TVL within its first 24 hours. Fourteen months later it's neck and neck with Kamino. A reported 6 October snapshot even had Jupiter slightly ahead on deposits, at $2.604 billion against Kamino's $2.578 billion, while Kamino stayed ahead on TVL.

Jupiter is also playing the curated-market game. In May it announced a market curated by Bitwise for Ethena-linked assets, and Ethena seeded $200 million of USDG into that Bitwise market, matched by another $200 million into a Kamino market curated by Sentora. When asset issuers spread their bets across both leaders, that's a sign the category is maturing.

For job seekers, Jupiter is one of the biggest employers in the ecosystem, and lending gives it a steady fee line alongside swaps and perps. Watch jup.ag for openings.

Formation: Orca and Loopscale join forces

The biggest structural news of the month is the merger of Orca and Loopscale, announced on 7 October. The combined team operates as Formation, headquartered in New York and led by Loopscale co-founder Luke Truitt as CEO.

The logic is that credit works best next to deep liquidity. Loopscale runs an order-book lending model with fixed-rate loans and lender-set terms, and says it has facilitated more than $2 billion in loans with over $150 million in deposits. Orca has processed more than $550 billion in trading volume since 2021. Put them together and an asset issuer can launch with trading and credit live from day one.

Formation says it's already working with Figure, Shinhan Asset Management, Superstate, R3 and Securitize. Loopscale's careers page currently lists a New York Product Designer role at $110,000–$140,000. Merged teams often reshuffle before they hire again, so keep an eye on it over the next quarter.

Project 0 and Save: the specialists

Marginfi rebranded as Project 0, a "DeFi-native prime broker". Instead of fighting Kamino and Jupiter for deposits, it sits on top of them. One margin account works across Kamino, Jupiter Lend, Drift and its own markets, and since April it says that covers about 98% of Solana lending TVL. In October it added a way for AI agents to connect, compare yields and prepare DeFi actions through natural language. Smart positioning: build on top of the giants, don't compete with them.

Save (formerly Solend) is Solana's original lender. It's much smaller now, at around $79 million, but still live and still shipping.

The risk investors should actually watch

Interest rates are the headline number, but utilisation is the one that bites. On 20 April, after the KelpDAO rsETH hack rippled across DeFi, Jupiter Lend's USDC utilisation hit about 99% and Kamino's Main Market about 96%. When nearly everything is lent out, lenders earn more but can't all withdraw at once.

Nothing broke, and rates did their job by pulling in fresh supply. But if you're depositing, check utilisation as well as APY, and spread across markets.

My take

Solana lending is moving from crypto-native leverage to real credit infrastructure: tokenised shares, institutional curators, fixed-rate order books and prime brokerage. That's great news for careers. These teams now need lawyers, risk analysts, BD people, product designers and Rust engineers, not just traders.

For investors, the signals are fees that hold up in a soft month, issuers like Ethena spreading capital across both leaders, and serious hires in New York. Concentration in two protocols is the main thing to keep an eye on.

What to do next

• Job seekers: shortlist Kamino, Jupiter, Formation and Project 0, and tailor your CV to institutional credit, compliance or risk. Browse more DeFi teams and Real World Assets teams.
• Investors: track fees, utilisation and curated-market deals, not just TVL.
• Builders: if your team is building in Solana credit, list it on Solana Teams so job seekers and investors can find you.

Explore every team building on Solana at solanateams.com/teams.