Anchorage, Kamino and Solana Company launch on-custody borrowing for staked SOL

Anchorage Digital, in partnership with Kamino and Solana Company, has built a framework that lets institutional holders tap liquidity against staked SOL without transferring their tokens out of a regulated custody environment. The setup routes collateral management through Anchorage’s Atlas platform while lending activity happens on Kamino’s Solana-native markets, enabling lenders and borrowers to interact onchain without forcing custodial transfer. Institutions keep earning staking rewards because the SOL remains staked under custody, while Anchorage enforces loan-to-value limits, margin rules and liquidation mechanics on behalf of clients. By avoiding the need to deposit assets into smart contracts, the arrangement addresses a practical and compliance-driven barrier that has kept many regulated entities at the margin of DeFi borrowing. Operationally, the model represents a hybrid: custody and governance controls sit with a chartered bank, while credit and lending flows move through decentralized infrastructure. That split reduces certain counterparty exposures for institutions but introduces dependency on the precise legal characterization of these onchain protocols. The timing is notable: enthusiasm for institutional DeFi access is rising even as U.S. lawmakers debate a framework for overseeing decentralized finance, leaving uncertainty about where responsibility and liability will land. If regulators treat the construct as a custodial service interacting with a third-party protocol, firms may feel comfortable scaling usage; if regulators instead construe broad obligations for protocol operators, the economics and compliance costs could change materially. For market participants, this product opens pathways to monetize staked holdings without interrupting staking yields, potentially improving balance-sheet efficiency and liquidity management. Yet the arrangement concentrates operational control with Anchorage as collateral manager, which may reassure risk officers while drawing scrutiny from decentralization purists. In sum, the integration is a pragmatic bridge between traditional custody practices and onchain lending, promising greater institutional engagement but exposing participants to the evolving legal and policy landscape that will determine how broadly such models can be deployed.