Triggering a Solana "civil war"? What exactly are Kamino and Jupiter fighting over?

Written by: 0xjs

Kamino Finance and Jupiter (especially its newly launched Jupiter Lend product) are two leading DeFi protocols in the Solana ecosystem, focusing respectively on lending and aggregation/liquidity management.

In early December 2025, they engaged in a public dispute, mainly revolving around risk disclosure, product isolation, and competitive behaviors. This “civil war” has drawn wide attention from the Solana community, even prompting Solana Foundation President Lily Liu to publicly intervene, urging both parties to stop attacking each other and focus instead on ecosystem growth.

Although the dispute is intense, it has not led to significant economic losses (Jupiter Lend’s TVL remains over $1 billion), and is more of a test of ecosystem trust and transparency.

1. Focus of the Dispute: What Are They Really Arguing About?

1. Jupiter Lend’s “Zero Risk” Marketing Controversy:

• Jupiter Lend launched in August 2025, quickly growing to $1 billion TVL. It promoted its “vaults” as having “isolated risk” and “zero contagion risk,” claiming that there was “no cross-contamination” between different trading pairs to attract user deposits.
• Competitors like Kamino accused this of being misleading. The actual mechanism uses rehypothecation: user collateral (such as SOL) is reused across vaults, meaning that a loss in one vault could indirectly affect others and create potential contagion risk. Kamino founder Marius Ciubotariu publicly stated this “undermines confidence in Solana DeFi” and used charts to show “full cross-asset exposure.”
• Jupiter COO Kash Dhanda admitted that earlier statements were “not accurate enough,” deleted the related tweets, and promised to update documentation after the Breakpoint conference. However, they defended that isolation refers only to configuration, and the protocol performed well during the market crash in October.

2. Kamino’s “Blacklist” Behavior:

• Kamino quietly modified its contract to prevent users from directly migrating/refinancing loans from Kamino to Jupiter Lend (via Jupiter’s Refinance tool). Kamino claimed this was to protect users from exposing funds to “insufficiently disclosed risks.”
• Jupiter founder Luca Netz criticized this as “user-hostile behavior,” violating the open principles of DeFi and potentially forcing users into negative APY. The community also accused Kamino of being “anti-competitive,” likening it to traditional bank barriers.

3. Broader Context: Market Competition and Ecosystem Pressure:

• Solana’s lending market TVL is about $5 billion (well below Ethereum’s $50 billion), with liquidity tightening (TVL has continued to fall since the October crash) and rug pull events making users sensitive to security.
• Kamino has long dominated (TVL over $2.3 billion), but Jupiter Lend, as a newcomer, has quickly grabbed market share (from 0 to $1 billion), raising concerns about a “vampire attack.”
• External influence: Tushar Jain, partner at Multicoin Capital (an investor in Kamino), called Jupiter “incompetent or malicious,” intensifying the feud; Fluid (Jupiter Lend’s backend provider) also became involved in the defense.

2. Timeline

3. Impact and Outlook

• For users: Short-term inconvenience (such as migration barriers), but a reminder to DYOR (do your own research). It’s advisable to diversify liquidity and avoid relying on a single protocol.
• For the ecosystem: Exposes the “growing pains” of Solana DeFi—rapid innovation, but governance relies on social reputation. The Foundation hopes this will drive clearer risk standards and help capture market share from Ethereum/TradFi.
• Who “won”? Currently a tie: Kamino has strengthened its “safe” image (KMNO up 2.5%), while Jupiter is fighting back with growth and product iteration (such as high APY) (JUP rebounded 5%). In the long run, this could spur better protocols, but if infighting continues, it may scare off institutional funds.

This dispute is a microcosm of Solana’s “high growth, low maturity”: fierce competition, but requiring more collaboration.