Rakkudos & Shakudo: Will NFTs with Rakoons go up?

First of all, there is Rakkudo, and there is Shakudo. Shakudo is the existing web2 platform, and Rakkudos is the NFT collection helping Shakudo to expand into web3. The collection minted on August 5, and started to trade at high FP once it hit the secondary markets. The floor price dropped since then. The high was 14 SOL on the mint date, and now it sits slightly above 4 SOL.

Shakudo allows users to easily build, host, and scale applications, all without the extra complications of hiring specialists that are usually required to launch such applications.

From the data provided by Simalarweb, the Shakudo front page has almost 30k total visits, and the traffic is growing by ~10k visits a month in the last 3 months.

The Rakkudos team is positioning themselves by comparing Shakudo to AWS: AWS has ~200 hundred services with different pricing options, and you have to get acquainted with those services (often hire a specialist in the field to do so). So there’s a hassle, learning which is time and expenses.

Rakkudos is a simpler solution than AWS. Shakudo allows you to build your whole application in one place without picking services or being exposed to complicated pricing.

It is sort of a decentralized serverless AWS designed for web2/web3 and data teams geared towards data processing and analysis. Shakudo also offers APIs that can be utilized to analyze the blockchain.

This project has captured the attention (or paid to get that attention) of some big names on Solana like @gaius1337, @SOLBigBrain, @ForrestGalt, @SOLPlayboy, and much of the SMB community.

The company has raised $4million+ in VC funding.

The team

Shakudo's team consists of 15+ fully doxxed members, with the Co-founders being ex-Amazon with PhD's in computing, applied math, etc.

In addition, they have an abundant amount of experience and a proven track record in the fields of AI and quantitative computing.

Shakudo's founding team launched ML/AI products in finance before Shakudo was started. Founder @evahlis worked in ML/AI at AT&T, Amazon's AWS.

Holder benefits

• Rakkudos holders will receive a $preKUDOS token each month. The token can be spent on Shakudo products and services. Later $preKudos can be swapped to $KUDOS token. KUDOS will be a cross-chain token spanning multiple L1 and L2 chains with expanded utility, a much larger supply, and various emission mechanisms. $preKUDOS is emitted only through Rakkudos NFT holders.
• Holders can also get referral fees through the Rakkudos ambassador program. Shakudo will pay 60% of the first year platform fees to the Rakkudos treasury for each qualified sale of the Shakudo Platform through a maximum of $20,000 USD per referral. The Rakkudos treasury will then distribute the commission to the referrer and all other qualified Rakkudos holders. The referrer will receive 40% of the reward, and the community will receive the remaining 60%. The payouts are designed so that you will not get a full payout if you do not hold Rakkudos NFT for 100 days.
• Early access to the Shakudo platform for builders. Discounts, credits & special offers to the shakudo platform.

I see a few things that could make investors want to buy or hold Rakkudos – 1) a passive income; 2) you are a builder and use the Shakudo platform, and the benefits you get from holding are really helpful.

1) Passive income. preKUDOS yield will be airdropped into Rakkudos holders once every month, and the counter resets if you sell NFT (or if it changes wallet in general).

The yield schedule varies across Rakkudos and depends on their rank. The current yield schedule in preKUDOS is:

• Ranks 1-1000 - 60 preKUDOS per year
• Ranks 1001-3000 - 37 preKUDOS per year
• Ranks 3001-5000 - 23 preKUDOS per year
• Ranks 5001-10000 - 14 preKUDOS per year

preKUDOS can be spent anytime on Shakudo products and services at a rate of 1 preKUDOS per USDC. So if you hold only one Rakkudo, the passive income from the preKUDOS airdrop alone will be insignificant.

Once KUDOS token is launched, preKUDOS can be swapped to KUDOS. But the question how much KUDOS will be worth still remains. Tokenomics are not released yet, and we need to have KUDOS trading at least 100USD per token to get a somewhat attractive return. Even then, the one common Rakkudo would only make 1400 yearly, which isn't that much.

Now speaking of another side of passive income coming from the referral program – at this point, it's hard to predict how it will go and how much of the referral revenue holders will get. The program hasn't even launched yet. But it's coming soon.

2) Shakudo user. First, the platform has little to offer for a regular everyday NFT degen. They wouldn’t hold an NFT for the platform discounts alone.

But, Rakkudos NFT can potentially be interesting for builder who uses Shakudo. If you’re a long-term platform user, why not hold an NFT to get all those discount benefits? In the end, you can just sell the NFT once you no longer need it. So, if Rakkudos gets more traction and users that are companies for which a couple of hundred SOL is nothing (as an investment in a service), we could see more diamond-handed holders with large bags.

Socials

The Rakkudos Twitter account currently has 21k followers, tweets receive below hundred interactions, the timeline is boring and has more retweets than tweets. Followers dropped by -1.575K in the last 30 days.

Discord shows 19k members. I also checked what others talk about Rakkudo on other servers to see what bullish and bearish perspectives I could find.

One thing to note is that there is little chatter about Rakkudos post-mint. Most mentions of the project on other SOL NFT Discord servers are from early August, when the collection was minted.

Few positive comments:

One more positive note on the Rakkudo + SHIFT collaboration (not officially confirmed). This could improve the art, which isn’t liked by many:

From the negative angle there are some talk that Rakkudos NFTs were dumped by ''influencers'':

The Rakkudo WL to influencers who dumped the bags post-mint FUD is still quite relevant as the fact left a bad taste in the month to some people. But this will likely fade with time, especially if the team proves they do good work materializing their vision.

Conclution

On the brighter side – there’s a working product already generating revenue (how much is unknown). A capable team with the founder who worked in AWS, meaning he is not new to types of services Shakudo offers. Also, great partner list:

It’s only been a month post-mint, and the key events like KUDOS tokenomics and referral program launch are yet to come. Perhaps art upgrade, and who knows what else the team has under its sleeves.

On the flip side, the supply is large (10k), at this point, NFT aren’t super interesting to NFT degens, as passive income opportunities are unclear, and Shakudo is made for builders with little to offer to NFT investors.

Regardless, 4 SOL for a project like this is cheap. The risk-reward ratio is on your side. If the project fails, there is a minimal downside, but if it succeeds with its referral program, growing user base, and increasing revenue and the share of that revenue to holders, then the upside can be even 10X. Rakkudos looks similar to Communi3 – both with great teams, working products, and a list of notable partners… Communi3: Mad scientist topped out at 65 SOL. 😲 Read more about Communi3 in this article: https://dexterlab.com/communi3-and-mad-scientists/

Nothing in this article is financial advice. Always do your own research!