Solana will have its native decentralized application (Dapp) store dubbed Solana Mobile Stack featuring other Web 3 applications as well. It will come with a built-in hardware wallet, seed vault for storing private keys, and much more.
The team behind the blockchain platform Solana is making a unique business divergence by venturing into the smartphone market. On Thursday, June 23, Solana announced its new Android handset “Saga”, a Web3-focused smartphone.
The upcoming smartphone will be basically an OSOM handset featuring some special crypto wallet functions along with the “Solana Mobile Stack (SMS)” software development kit for Web3 programs. Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko said that the “Saga” handset will be available in early 2023 for an estimated price of around $1,000.
The development seems to bring the crypto and the mobile world together. Solana said that Saga will make crypto interaction seamless for users without needing a thumb drive or browser extension.
This will also turn out to be Solana’s biggest mobile-focused growth. The Solana Saga smartphone will feature a Web3 dapp (decentralized app) store. It will also have a mobile wallet adapter and a “seed vault” which will store private keys partitioned from the wallets.
The Solana Saga handset will also come integrated with “Solana Pay” for facilitating QR code-based on-chain payments. During the announcement, Solana CEO Anatoly Yakovenko said:
“This is something that I fundamentally believe the industry needs to do. We didn’t see a single crypto feature at the Apple developer conference 13 years after Bitcoin was alive. People will pull out their laptops in the middle of dates so they don’t miss an NFT minting opportunity. So I think it’s time for crypto to go mobile”.
Working with Partner Companies
To build its Web3 smartphone, Solana shall be working with other partner companies. This includes partnering with the top non-fungible tokens (NFT) marketplace, Magic Eden. Besides, Solana will also be partnering with the biggest wallet provider Phantom, as well as decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Orca.
Solana CEO Yakovenko said that the Solana Dapp store will be an SMS-fueled store (SMS=Solana Mobile Stack). Unlike Apple and Google, Solana will not be taking a cut from sales. To support this development of mobile apps on its Solana Mobile Stack (SMS), the Solana Foundation has pledged $10 million in funds. Yakovenko said:
“We live our lives on our mobile devices – except for Web3 because there hasn’t been a mobile-centric approach to private key management. The Solana Mobile Stack shows a new path forward on Solana that is open source, secure, optimized for Web3 and easy to use.”
FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried also praised the development noting: “Everything is going mobile. 1% of my purchases right now can be with crypto … but I would way prefer [paying with it]. Having web3-enabled devices with a hardware wallet in it is super powerful.”
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