Frakt are a new Solana NFTfi (NFT finance) protocol on Solana. But they're not "new" perse. They've been around for quite a while, but as a collection of NFT projects. This new platform is those projects evolving to become a new type of protocol. It's very interesting and quite impressive what they've been able to accomplish so far.

What is Frakt?

From https://docs.frakt.xyz/frakt/

FRAKT is the first decentralized NFT liquidity protocol on Solana offering both peer-to-pool and peer-to-peer loans

*Depositors/lenders provide SOL liquidity to the lending pools and/or to the order books in order to earn Interest, while borrowers are able to borrow SOL instantly using their NFTs as collaterals The FRAKT protocol is a set of products designed to unlock liquidity from both floor & expensive NFTs so that this liquidity can then be used in DeFi.
Individuals & DAOs can therefore:

- Unlock liquidity instantly
- Generate sustainable yields
- Empower their communities*

What are the advantages of the FRAKT protocol?

Some highlights for me were:

• There's a wide range of loan products, they've covered a lot of the borrower use cases

• The Bonds feature automates automates and optimises the process for the lender PLUS Bonds make loans tradable, so essentially they've created a proper debt bonds product. Which is wild as that's something a lot of normal defi still doesn't have.

• They already started integrating with existing NFT project staking mechanisms. The first being DeGods NFTs, allowing lenders to keep their DeGods NFTs staked and accumulating $DUST whilst also lending it. It's basically LSD (liquid staking derivative) for NFTs. Very clever. Expect to see other protocols copy this.

The roadmap

<https://medium.com/@frakt_HQ/roadmap-to-ido-1e671ed3968d >

The Frakt story

This is very much a BAYC kind of evolution in my mind. The team have taken what were NFT projects and have evolved them into a defi protocol focused on NFTs.

What's in it for me?

The main game is BANX NFTs and $FRAKT tokens. Both are yet to launch. Here's the rewards for holding them

BANX & $FRAKT rewards https://docs.frakt.xyz/frakt/holder-benefits/sustainable-passive-income-discounts-raffles-and-boosts

$FRAKT rewards https://docs.frakt.xyz/frakt/holder-benefits/usdfrakt-utilities

$FRAKT tokenomics https://docs.frakt.xyz/frakt/holder-benefits/usdfrakt-tokenomics

Points per BANX https://docs.frakt.xyz/frakt/holder-benefits/points-per-banx

Now there already existing NFTs and tokens out there. These NFTs and tokens will replace them. So you can buy those now, and migrate them across rather than getting them at mint/IDO.

Migration guide here: https://docs.frakt.xyz/frakt/holder-benefits/migrating-nfts-and-usdfrkt

Let’s look at each one in turn.

FRKT token

For mine it's most likely best to wait for the new token.

There's too much uncertainty, for me, with the token prices (both $FRKT and $FRAKT). The conversion rate of $FRKT to $FRAKT is about 60% so you're not even getting one for one.

Plus they've burned a lot of existing tokens already so there might not be a heap of liquidity out there: "In June 2022 we burned 40M $FRKT so only 10M $FRKT remains"

However the price of $FRKT is down a bit in recent months so....maybe it's worth a bet to convert.

From https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/frakt-token/

Pawnshop Gnomies & Frakt NFTs

The floor price for Pawnshop Gnomies on Hyperspace is currently just over 12 $SOL and just over 10 $SOL for Frakt

The mint price for the BANX presale is 10 $SOL, so unless they're going to sell out (and there's only 20K being released) because of Frakt/Pawnshop Gnomies holders taking up the entire allocation via the migration, then I should think waiting for the new mint is the better bet. Do some research yourself of course.

Presale

As mentioned above there is a presale for BANX NFTs and the new $FRAKT token. You have till Apr 20 to get whitelisted for most of that.

Info from Frakt Discord's #new-buyer channel

Frakt tokens

How can I buy into the Frakt ecosystem?

• Frakt NFT: https://hyperspace.xyz/collection/frakt

• Pawnshop Gnomies NFT: https://hyperspace.xyz/collection/pawnshopgnomies

• $FRKT Token: https://jup.ag/swap/SOL-FRKT

What are the benefits of being a holder?

Holders receive flip loan discounts, liquidation raffle tickets, governance, and revenue share. Both NFT collections receive the same benefits, but they are accounted for differently

How are benefits accounted for?

NFTs and token are assigned Player and Partner point values

• Partner Points: passive benefits - revenue share, governance

• Player Points: active benefits - flip loan discounts and liquidation raffle tickets

Should I buy Frakt, Gnomies, or $FRKT?

Depends on which benefits you are interested in. At current prices, buy Frakts for raffle tickets and loan discounts, buy Gnomies for revenue share. $FRKT token has no utility until migration to $FRAKT after IDO. Then it will receive the same benefits as NFTs:

How do I determine which NFTs are the best deal on Partner/Player points?

The best deals app identifies the cheapest SOL/point NFTs based on your desired number of points to purchase:

Should I stake Frakts, Gnomies, or $FRKT?

Currently, only Frakts need to be staked to unlock benefits:

BANX NFTs

How can I buy into the Frakt ecosystem?

• Frakt NFT: https://hyperspace.xyz/collection/frakt

• Pawnshop Gnomies NFT: https://hyperspace.xyz/collection/pawnshopgnomies

• $FRKT Token: https://jup.ag/swap/SOL-FRKT

What are the benefits of being a holder?

Holders receive flip loan discounts, liquidation raffle tickets, governance, and revenue share. Both NFT collections receive the same benefits, but they are accounted for differently

How are benefits accounted for?

NFTs and token are assigned Player and Partner point values

• Partner Points: passive benefits - revenue share, governance

• Player Points: active benefits - flip loan discounts and liquidation raffle tickets

Should I buy Frakt, Gnomies, or $FRKT?

Depends on which benefits you are interested in. At current prices, buy Frakts for raffle tickets and loan discounts, buy Gnomies for revenue share. $FRKT token has no utility until migration to $FRAKT after IDO. Then it will receive the same benefits as NFTs:

How do I determine which NFTs are the best deal on Partner/Player points?

The best deals app identifies the cheapest SOL/point NFTs based on your desired number of points to purchase:

Should I stake Frakts, Gnomies, or $FRKT?

Currently, only Frakts need to be staked to unlock benefits:

So why should I care?

Good question. There's thousands NFT and/or token projects out there. Most are scams. I've noticed some even being promoted on BULB. Why is this one any different? There's few reasons in my mind.

Firstly the team are continuing to deliver on their roadmap. That's a great sign for any project, crypto or otherwise. As the saying goes: "it's hard to steer a parked car" so the fact this team have momentum is important.

Secondly; Frakt are putting up good numbers. They have a combined TVL of just over 3M at time of writing.

With low but consistent yields across their lending pools.

See https://defillama.com/yields?project=frakt for details.

That's pretty good for an early stage project. Remember they've not even fully launched yet.

Lastly NFTfi is a rapidly growing use case in defi and these guys are the first on Solana to do it. It may be dwarfed by regular defi but once upon a time defi was on a fledgling industry as well. NFT projects have value. That isn't up for debate anymore.

How you appropriately manage that value is at least partly down to financial methods.

From the Decrypt - Borrowing Against NFTs Is Now a $1 Billion Industry—What’s Next?

Per data pulled from Dune, the cumulative volume for borrowing against NFTs has just hit $1 billion.
This measures the dollar value of borrowing activity across several notable projects including market leading NFT liquidity providers NFTfi and BendDAO, but also newcomers like Paraspace.
As of April 6, NFTfi facilitated more than $390 million, BendDAO boasts nearly $298 million, and Paraspace has already hit $236 million. The number of cumulative users has also soared well above 40,000.

The Risks aka DYOR

You should take care when investing in anything. 10 $SOL is not cheap, even for a NFT. The buy in for $FRAKT token will be considerably less but still won't be free.

Do your due diligence (it's also fun to do!):

• Join up the to Discord, have a read and ask any question if you have them.

• Read through the documentation and the Medium blog.

• Try out a small stake in one of the lending products available now on the app as a test.

• Have a dig through the numbers on DeFi Llama

The numbers (on DeFi Llama) will be the ultimate test here. If they maintain, then Frakt has a fighting chance, but liquidity is a funny thing and there might be a number of existing NFT and token holders looking to exit soon after the migration.

You should be thinking long term with any investment that's based on yield so if you think the fundamentals of what Frakt is trying to achieve are solid then short term movements in price aren't much concern. They may even be an opportunity to increase your stake cheapy.

But liquidity matters so keep an eye on that. Liquidity is vital to maintaining a projects health. You lose enough liquidity and it's game over.

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