Solana Labs co-founder teases chance of third cellular system
Last month, Solana Mobile’s flagship web3 smartphone, the Saga, bought out. Last week the Solana Labs’ subsidiary launched its second cellphone and bought over 40,000 preorders in lower than a week. But the corporate just isn’t slowing down anytime quickly.
“After Saga sold out, it felt like there’s an opportunity and the timing in the market was right,” Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, stated on Ztoog’s Chain Reaction podcast. “The timing [for the new phone] worked out right around that moment.”
And if the second system is a success, there shall be a third cellphone launched afterward, Yakovenko hinted. Web3 cell phones are usually not a punchline, in different phrases, however a potential progress class.
But Solana Mobile’s street to progress wasn’t a straightforward one. Its first Saga handset didn’t see a lot demand when it launched mid-2023 at $1,000. It quickly lowered the value to $599 in mild of weak demand.
Saga’s fortunes improved after crypto customers observed the dog-centric memecoin BONK’s decentralized app (dApp) supplied Saga homeowners with 30 million of its tokens free of charge, which was valued across the identical value because the cellphone on the time. The Saga then bought out rapidly.
“I think crypto was going through a hard bear market, and the Solana ecosystem was feeling the worst of it,” Yakovenko stated. “We were looking for more devs to go to launch and I would say [we were] kind of in survival mode because during that chasm of despair you just need to survive until something like macro [turns the market] around.”