Risk Disclosure

Important. This Risk Disclosure describes material risks associated with rkuSOL and with participation in the stake pool operated through Sanctum's liquid staking infrastructure, as referenced on the website at raiku.com. It is not exhaustive and does not describe every risk associated with digital assets, blockchain technology, liquid staking or decentralised finance. You should read this Risk Disclosure together with our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before interacting with rkuSOL or with any stake pool or decentralised finance application. You should also review the risk disclosures of Sanctum and any other third-party service you interact with.

No regulatory approval. Neither rkuSOL nor the Services has been approved, reviewed, endorsed or registered by any governmental, regulatory or supervisory authority in any jurisdiction. The legal and regulatory treatment of rkuSOL and of liquid staking varies by jurisdiction and may change over time. You should not assume that rkuSOL or the Services are approved, licensed or supervised for any particular purpose in any jurisdiction.

No advice. Nothing in this Risk Disclosure or in the Services constitutes investment, legal, tax or other professional advice. You should obtain independent professional advice before making any decision to deposit SOL, mint or hold rkuSOL, or interact with any third-party protocol.

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1. General risks of digital assets

Price volatility. SOL, rkuSOL and other digital assets can be highly volatile. Their market price may fluctuate significantly over short periods and may fall as well as rise. You should be prepared for the possibility of losing some or all of the value you deploy in connection with the stake pool.

No compensation schemes. Digital assets are generally not covered by investor compensation schemes, deposit guarantee schemes or other protections that apply to traditional financial products. If you lose digital assets, there may be no legal or practical means of recovering them.

Irreversibility. Transactions on public blockchains are generally irreversible. Errors made by you or by any third party, and transactions induced by fraud, phishing or exploit, typically cannot be undone.

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2. Smart contract and technology risk

rkuSOL is implemented through smart contracts and infrastructure deployed by Sanctum and by third parties on the Solana blockchain. Smart contracts, validator software and the underlying blockchain protocol may contain bugs, vulnerabilities, design flaws or other errors. Such errors may result in loss of, or inability to access, staked SOL or rkuSOL, whether through exploit, unintended behaviour, or failure of the smart contract to function as described.

Audit of smart contracts and infrastructure does not eliminate this risk. The existence of an audit report does not constitute an assurance, by Raiku or by the auditor, that the relevant smart contract is free of defects or that the underlying infrastructure is secure. New vulnerabilities may emerge over time, and smart contracts may be upgraded or modified in ways that introduce new risks. Any reliance on such smart contracts or infrastructure is at your own risk.

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3. Validator and staking risk

Validator performance. Staking rewards depend on the performance of the validators to which the stake pool delegates SOL. Validators may experience downtime, degraded performance or technical failures, any of which may reduce or eliminate staking rewards.

Slashing. Solana does not currently implement protocol-level slashing penalties for validator misbehaviour or non-performance. However, future protocol changes (including SIMD-0204 or comparable proposals) may introduce slashing or analogous penalties. If any such mechanism is implemented and a validator to which the stake pool delegates SOL is subject to slashing, that slashing may reduce the amount of SOL backing rkuSOL and, correspondingly, the redemption value of rkuSOL. Raiku does not insure against, indemnify or reimburse slashing losses.

Variable rewards. Staking rewards are not fixed, not guaranteed and dependent on factors outside Raiku's control, including Solana protocol parameters, network activity, validator commission rates, stake pool fees and MEV-related mechanics. Historical or estimated rewards are not indicative of future rewards.

Priority fee and MEV exposure. A material component of validator economics on Solana is derived from priority fees and from maximal extractable value (“MEV”), including tips routed to validators by block-builder infrastructure. The level, composition and continued availability of priority-fee and MEV revenue depend on Solana network demand, on the block-building and transaction-ordering software used by the relevant validator, and on protocol-level changes (including SIMD or comparable proposals) that may alter how such revenue is captured, distributed, burned or redirected. Such revenue may be reduced or eliminated by network conditions or by protocol or validator-software changes that are outside Raiku’s control. No representation is made that priority-fee or MEV revenue will continue at any historical level, will be passed through to rkuSOL holders in any particular proportion, or will be available at all. The economics of the stake pool, including the share (if any) of priority-fee or MEV revenue accruing to rkuSOL holders, are determined by Sanctum’s stake-pool protocol and by the validator software in use, not by Raiku.

4. Liquidity, redemption and market price risk

Unstaking. Redemption of rkuSOL for SOL is subject to the mechanics of the Solana protocol and the Sanctum infrastructure, including any applicable unbonding period, withdrawal queue or fee. Redemption may be delayed, throttled or subject to fees during periods of stress. In extreme circumstances redemption may not be available at all for an extended period.

Secondary market. rkuSOL may be traded on third-party decentralised exchanges and other venues. The market price of rkuSOL on such venues may deviate (including materially) from the value of the underlying staked SOL. Such deviation may be caused by illiquidity, market stress, forced selling, perceived counterparty risk or other factors. You may receive materially less SOL than expected when disposing of rkuSOL on secondary venues.

Liquidity on secondary venues. Liquidity in rkuSOL on decentralised exchanges and other venues is not guaranteed and may be limited or unavailable. Raiku does not make, operate or guarantee any secondary market for rkuSOL and does not act as market maker, liquidity provider or price support for rkuSOL.

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5. Custody and wallet risk

You are solely responsible for the security of any wallet you use to interact with the stake pool, Sanctum, decentralised exchanges, lending markets or other third-party services. Loss of private keys, seed phrases or other credentials, compromise of a device or wallet, phishing, malicious contract approvals, wallet drainers and similar events may result in irrecoverable loss of rkuSOL and other digital assets. Raiku has no ability to recover lost or stolen digital assets and does not offer any insurance or compensation mechanism in respect of such losses.

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6. Third-party service risk

Sanctum. Minting, holding and redemption of rkuSOL, and the operation of the stake pool, depend on Sanctum's infrastructure. Raiku is not Sanctum and does not control Sanctum's operation, policies, smart contracts or continuity. Any failure, outage, change in policy or discontinuation of Sanctum's services may affect your ability to mint, hold, transfer or redeem rkuSOL. Your interaction with Sanctum is governed by Sanctum's own terms of service and privacy policy.

DeFi and other protocols. If you elect to use rkuSOL in decentralised finance protocols (including lending, borrowing, trading, yield or other protocols), you are subject to additional risks specific to each such protocol, including smart contract risk, liquidation risk, oracle risk, governance risk and composability risk. Those risks may compound. Use of any such protocol is at your own risk and is not recommended, endorsed or supported by Raiku. Any third-party yield, annual percentage rate, return figure or strategy description published by, or on, a third-party protocol or any source other than the Services is not a representation or statement of Raiku, has not been verified by Raiku, and must not be relied on as if it were a representation by Raiku. Raiku does not pay any yield on rkuSOL and does not guarantee, support or backstop any yield offered by any third-party protocol.

Bridges. If rkuSOL is bridged, wrapped or otherwise represented on any blockchain other than Solana, additional bridge-specific risks apply, including the risk of loss of bridged assets due to bridge exploits or failures.

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7. Regulatory and legal risk

The legal and regulatory treatment of rkuSOL, liquid staking, Sanctum, the Solana network and decentralised finance applications is uncertain in many jurisdictions and is evolving. New laws, regulations, regulatory guidance, enforcement actions, court decisions or administrative interpretations may (among other things) restrict or prohibit the availability, use, transferability or liquidity of rkuSOL in your jurisdiction, impose new compliance obligations on you, make secondary markets for rkuSOL unavailable, or affect the value of rkuSOL. You are solely responsible for ensuring that your participation complies with the laws applicable to you. You should obtain independent legal advice if you are in doubt.

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8. Tax risk

The tax treatment of interacting with the stake pool, of minting, holding, transferring or redeeming rkuSOL, of staking rewards and of any use of rkuSOL in decentralised finance applications is complex, uncertain and varies by jurisdiction. Nothing on the Services constitutes tax advice. You are solely responsible for determining and meeting your tax obligations. You should consult your own qualified tax adviser before participating.

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9. Governance, upgrade and discontinuation risk

The Sanctum infrastructure, the stake pool, the Solana protocol and any third-party protocol to which rkuSOL is exposed may be subject to upgrades, parameter changes, hard forks, governance decisions or discontinuation. Such changes may affect the availability, value, security or behaviour of rkuSOL. Raiku does not control these processes.

Raiku may in its sole discretion modify, suspend or discontinue all or part of the Services at any time, including any content or information relating to rkuSOL. Discontinuation of the Services does not, by itself, affect the continued existence of rkuSOL on the Solana blockchain or your ability to interact with Sanctum or third-party services, but may affect the availability of information about rkuSOL and about the validator set.

Solana network fork or consensus failure. The Solana blockchain has, in the past, experienced periods of partial or total network outage, transaction-processing degradation, consensus failure and contested state. Future outages, halts, hard forks (whether contentious or non-contentious), chain splits, reorganisations or other consensus-level events may occur and may cause: (a) the temporary or permanent inability to mint, redeem or transfer rkuSOL; (b) loss of, or inability to access, staked SOL or accrued rewards; (c) ambiguity as to which fork or chain state is canonical and as to the corresponding rkuSOL position; or (d) material divergence between the rkuSOL/SOL exchange rate and the recoverable value of the underlying staked SOL. Raiku does not control the Solana protocol, does not control the validator set as a whole and cannot prevent, mitigate or compensate for such events. Recovery (if any) following a fork or consensus failure depends on the actions of the Solana validator community, the Solana Foundation and Sanctum, and is outside Raiku’s control.

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10. Future tokens and airdrops

References on the Services to any future governance token, airdrop or token generation event are informational only. No such token has been issued, and no offer of any such token is being made by, or on behalf of, Raiku through the Services. Any such token, if and when issued, will be issued by an entity other than Raiku and will be subject to separate terms and conditions, subscription or participation agreements and, where applicable, regulatory disclosures. No representation is made by Raiku as to the timing, availability, utility, value or eligibility criteria of any such future token. You should not deposit SOL, mint rkuSOL or take any other action in expectation of receiving any future token.

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11. Information on the Services

Information published on the Services is provided for general informational purposes only. It may be incomplete, out of date or inaccurate. You should not rely on the Services as the sole basis for any decision. Links to third-party websites, documents, protocols or data sources are provided for convenience only and do not imply endorsement or verification by Raiku.

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12. Acknowledgement

By accessing or using the Services, you acknowledge that you have read, understood and accepted this Risk Disclosure, that the risks described in it (and other risks not described in it) may cause you to suffer partial or total loss of the value of any SOL or rkuSOL you deploy, and that you should not interact with rkuSOL unless you are able to bear that loss in full.

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