Speculating on the future of defi mobility with Solana’s new crypto phone – Tearsheet

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Talk­ing cryp­to mobile has been the ‘next big thing’ for a while now. In 2019, big names like HTC and Sam­sung unveiled plans for a blockchain ready phone, but so far those have strug­gled with cap­tur­ing wide con­sumer interest.

For exam­ple, HTC’s Exo­dus 1S was launched with the promise of the phone func­tion­ing as a ful­ly inde­pen­dent Bit­coin node. How­ev­er, this func­tion required the phone to be con­nect­ed to Wi-Fi and a pow­er source — essen­tial­ly com­pro­mis­ing its core func­tion as a smart­phone: mobil­i­ty. Hence, the dream of a smart­phone with top-of-the-line specs as well as reli­able soft­ware and hard­ware sup­port for Web3 was quite dis­tant until very recently.

Solana, the blockchain com­pa­ny that has been com­pet­ing with the likes of Ethereum for the fastest and cheap­est trans­ac­tions, is going to launch a Web3 ‑ready flag­ship prod­uct called Saga. This device will have the Solana Mobile Stack as well as a siloed secure envi­ron­ment for stor­ing pri­vate keys and seed phras­es, called the Seed Vault. These func­tion­al­i­ties will allow devel­op­ers to cre­ate DeFi and Web3 expe­ri­ences for mobile. Mar­ius Ciub­o­tar­iu, the co-founder of a Solana Project called the Hub­ble Pro­to­col, says that so far, Defi has been a clunky beast to oper­ate. Suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment of Web3 mobile expe­ri­ence can push the nee­dle in ways reign­ing smart­phone indus­try lead­ers haven’t been able to do. “It’s not uncom­mon for the most devot­ed DeFi par­tic­i­pants to whip out a lap­top in the mid­dle of din­ner so as not to miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty” he added, empha­siz­ing that a mobile expe­ri­ence could change the game for cryp­to enthu­si­asts and investors. 

Rethink­ing the Smartphone?

For the DeFi space to ful­ly absorb mobile pos­si­bil­i­ties, some changes will have to be made. For Mar­ius, tra­di­tion­al smart­phones don’t offer the software/hardware sup­port that DeFi requires. Mean­while indus­try giants like Apple need very strong con­sumer demand to jus­ti­fy allo­cat­ing R&D funds to rethink­ing their entire archi­tec­ture for the blockchain. This is where Solana’s advan­tage seems to be: a fresh slate allows the com­pa­ny to build with­out the iner­tia pro­duced by lega­cy archi­tec­ture and design constraints.

As impor­tant as inno­va­tion and mod­i­fi­ca­tion is for a suc­cess­ful prod­uct, Saga isn’t com­plete­ly new. The phone is a result of a part­ner­ship between Solana and OSOM, which ear­li­er promised the pri­va­cy-first hand­set “OV1”. This device nev­er hit the shelves but OSOM’s recent announce­ment on Twit­ter con­veyed that OV1 is now Saga.

How­ev­er, parts of Saga are entire­ly new, in all the right ways. For exam­ple, Scott Carl­son Direc­tor of Inno­va­tion at Kudel­s­ki Secu­ri­ty thinks that estab­lished smart­phone com­pa­nies may need to for­feit some con­trol to ensure they can keep up. “If tra­di­tion­al play­ers are going to con­tin­ue to wait for legal cer­tain­ty and take 30% of the trans­ac­tion fee for any dig­i­tal item (pur­chase), they will not move the nee­dle” he said. 

The biggest leap for­ward, though, seems to be Saga’s antic­i­pat­ed role in unlock­ing Defi capa­bil­i­ties that were pre­vi­ous­ly locked in the world of lap­tops and desk­tops. Accord­ing to the Solana Foun­da­tion, whether it is trad­ing risk through Defi Apps or mint­ing NFTs, “mobi­liza­tion”  can help in boost­ing CX and reach. More com­mon use cas­es like gam­ing, which requires secure stor­age of funds, have the poten­tial to touch base with an entire­ly new con­sumer segment.

The dreams are big

The pos­si­bil­i­ty of Web3 becom­ing mobile is encour­ag­ing fin­techs to build prod­ucts that were out of reach before. For the Hub­ble Pro­to­col this means nov­el ways of earn­ing pas­sive income  can become a real­i­ty. “In this mod­el, con­sumers can stake tokens, and instead of receiv­ing an APY, they receive a util­i­ty – such as VPN ser­vices” says Ciub­o­tar­iu. More­over, once a con­sumer has access to this VPN ser­vice, they can tok­enize their unused band­width and earn rewards for doing so. Sim­i­lar­ly, for the Solana Foun­da­tion, Saga’s promise to bring NFTs to mobile may lead to busi­ness­es being able to incor­po­rate in tap-to-mint acqui­si­tion, NFT-gat­ed com­merce, and IRL events in their cus­tomer experience.

Set­ting spec­u­la­tion aside, the announced specs on Saga peg it as a stan­dard high per­for­mance phone, which can work well for both casu­al and pow­er users. At the moment the phone is avail­able for pre-order at $100, with an esti­mat­ed price of $1000 upon its launch.

Once it launch­es, Saga will have to per­form under the scruti­ny of both smart­phone pow­er users and those well-versed in the Defi and NFT space. How­ev­er, the true test will be how the device bal­ances blockchain-ready hard­ware with the com­pet­i­tive demands of a high-end smart­phone. Until NFT-mind­ed gamers and cryp­to enthu­si­asts can test run this phone en masse, all we can do is wait, because this saga has yet to unfold. 



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