The 1st Crypto Phone📱
time for crypto to go mobile!
Hello friends!👋
Precisely 15 years ago, the mobile phone industry witnessed a tectonic shift in user experience and consumable technology. We went from flip/slider phones to a smartphone with no keypad and a giant screen (by old standards of course). That stuff was magic to people who used it. Sadly, I was too young to even know about it back then. Anyway, fast forward 15 years, and pretty much all our applications and interactions are mobile-first!
Part of the reason why crypto hasn’t achieved mass adoption is the poor user experience. Having to install multiple browser extensions that are limited to desktops doesn’t really serve the GenZ or the younger millennials. Solana with its announcement of the Solana Mobile Stack (SMS) and its flagship device is looking to tackle this issue head-on. I read the project docs and here’s the rundown 👇
What is the Solana Mobile Stack (SMS)?
SMS equips developers with specific technologies to build apps on the Android OS that can interact with the Solana blockchain. A developer that’s building for SMS is essentially building for Android. There are 4 integral components in the stack:
The Solana D-App Store
Much like the Google Playstore, Solana intends to build its dapp store that’ll host applications built on the Solana ecosystem. Apple/Google throttling the expansion of crypto on their platform means there’s now a market open for a crypto-native app store. Currently, users have to visit websites of the applications they wish to use on browsers that are compatible with crypto wallets. So the dappstore will make a user’s life much, much easier. The applications can expect an uptick in user growth simply because they’ll be visible to users in the first place and can establish a direct relationship with them. These dApps will be 1st class citizens on a phone like any other app.
The great thing for now is - dapp owners need not pay a cut of their revenues to the Solana dapp store. This is unlike Google or Apple which charge 30-40% of revenues to the app creators. One could argue there’s no fee since they need developers to build right now. I think even if they were to implement a fee later on (5 years down the line at the earliest), it would be nowhere as high as Google or Apple and more like a 5% cut.
Mobile Wallet Adapter
For starters, a wallet stores your seed phrase/private keys and hence your coins. Every time you use a dapp, the dapp will ask you to sign a request via your wallet to prevent fraud. Think of this like Google Pay asking for your finger ID or pin code, before confirming a transaction. Now this works well on a desktop but the experience is horrible when using dapps on mobile. At times, the dapp on the mobile isn’t able to invoke the wallet so users do not receive the prompt to sign the transaction. In the best-case scenario, you could access dapps via the built-in browsers on these wallets. Overall, the UX isn’t great. This is where the adapter comes into play.
The mobile wallet adapter allows dapps to securely sign transactions on your mobile using the private key without having to manually access your wallet. This will be an open-source specification so expect to see a lot of upgrades and improvements over time. The best part about this implementation is the ability to use your phone to sign messages/transactions on any device, remotely! This was not possible before.
The Seed Vault
Software wallets like Metamask (Ethereum wallet) or Phantom (Solana wallet) do a great job with user experience when it comes to using them standalone. Being connected to the internet means they’re not as secure as hardware wallets. The catch with hardware wallets is they’re not user-friendly and hence, hard to use.
The seed vault brings the best of both worlds to users of the Solana phone. The private key is secured by a dedicated module that already exists in smartphones so no new hardware is needed. The keys are used only while signing transactions in a secure environment and they make sure the seed phrase is not shared with the Android OS or the Solana applications. If this works out well, this will be a game-changer for the user experience.
Solana Pay for Android
Lastly, the 4th feature is Solana Pay, currently out for Android only. This is pretty much like Google Pay but for Solana ecosystem tokens. Not just $SOL but all SPL tokens that are built on the Solana blockchain! Users can use NFC taps or scan QR codes to access the payment URLs. The average transaction time is <1 sec and costs on average $0.0005 only.
This feature was launched well ahead of the SMS but it makes a lot more sense to integrate this with a mobile-first approach.
All these features combined will make for a great user experience and could be the best shot someone’s taken in their attempt to hit a billion users. Whether this works out or not, it certainly looks like a step in the right direction.
Well, we spoke about development kits and features Solana is planning to roll out but how long until people can use it? It turns out they already have a hardware plan in store that’s going to roll out in Q1 2023 👀👇
Saga
Anatoly Yakovenko announced Saga, the flagship android mobile phone running the Solana Mobile Stack! The phone is expected to have all the features a regular android phone has alongside the SMS ecosystem built into it. The team that created this device was led by Jason Keats, the architect of iPad Pro. The phone is currently priced at $1000 and users can pre-order for a deposit of 100 USDC (refundable). As of June 24th, they have 1218 pre-orders. Now, let’s look at the specs of the phone:-
6.67” OLED Display
512 GB of storage
12 GB RAM
Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 - the latest processor released by Qualcomm
An Integrated Secure Element
There’s not enough information available on the camera but looking at the hardware specs, they’ve clearly designed it for performance and targeted the developers and crypto degens. It’s gonna be available in the UK, EU, CA, and the US to start with.
Spending resources on a phone in a market this competitive is ballsy but goes on to show these guys are trying to innovate and seem to be focused on their goal of onboarding a billion users. Their move to mobile will invite a massive pool of Java developers to look into the Solana ecosystem. Usually, developer activity is a leading indicator of success in an ecosystem so gotta pay close attention here.
Even if the phone fails, there will be plenty of lessons to take home not just for Solana but for other ecosystems too. Very bullish on crypto long-term! 🚀
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