The Complete Guide to Solana Lending

Lending protocols are on-chain money markets: suppliers deposit assets to earn yield, borrowers post collateral to draw a loan, and an algorithm sets interest rates based on how much of the available liquidity is currently borrowed.

The main protocols

Kamino combines lending markets with automated liquidity-management vaults.

Save (formerly Solend) has the longest track record of the major Solana lending protocols, including having weathered a widely publicized large-position stress event early in its history.

MarginFi uses a unified cross-margin account model, evaluating a user’s collateral and borrowing together rather than isolating each position.

Supplying: the simpler side

If you supply an asset — commonly a stablecoin like USDC — you earn the pool’s floating interest rate without taking on borrowing risk directly. See our guide to lending USDC specifically. You still carry smart-contract risk and, in shared pools, some exposure to how other collateral in that pool performs.

Borrowing: where the real risk lives

Borrowing means posting collateral — typically SOL, an LST, or another asset the protocol accepts — and drawing a loan against a percentage of its value (the loan-to-value ratio). If your collateral’s value falls relative to what you’ve borrowed, and your position crosses the protocol’s liquidation threshold, part or all of your collateral gets automatically sold to repay the loan, usually with a penalty. This is covered in depth in our liquidation risk guide.

Isolated vs. shared risk pools

Newer lending protocol designs increasingly isolate specific collateral types into separate pools, so a problem with one risky asset (a hack, an oracle failure, a sudden illiquidity event) doesn’t automatically threaten every other asset in the protocol. When evaluating a lending market, check whether the specific pool you’re using is isolated or shares risk with everything else the protocol supports.

Interest rates and utilization

Rates aren’t fixed — they float based on pool utilization (the percentage of supplied liquidity currently borrowed). High utilization generally means higher rates for both suppliers and borrowers, and can also mean suppliers face temporary withdrawal delays if too much of the pool is actively lent out. Always check current rates directly in the app rather than relying on a number from an older source, including this one.

Key risks to understand before using any of these

• Liquidation risk for borrowers — see our dedicated guide.
• Smart contract risk, same as any DeFi protocol.
• Oracle risk — lending protocols depend on price feeds to determine when to liquidate; manipulated or delayed oracle data has caused real losses across DeFi.
• Liquidity risk for suppliers during high-utilization periods.

Read our broader DeFi risk guide for how lending risk fits alongside the other categories.