Solana Labs Launches Solana Mobile: Towards the Web3 Era
Description of Solana Labs Launches Solana Mobile: Towards the Web3 Era
This event created great impressions and questions were raised:
- What is Solana planning when entering the phone segment?
- What is special about Solana's phone?
- What are the downsides of this product?
- What is the development potential of Solana Mobile?
- Are there enough factors to be successful?
All will be answered right below, find out now!
What is Solana Mobile?
Solana Mobile (or Saga) is an android phone and will be supported by the Solana Mobile Stack SDK to help developers easily develop applications.
The basic parameters of Solana Mobile will be as follows:
- Price: 1,000 USD, will be pre-ordered with 100 USD deposit at Solana Mobile event.
- Screen: Dimensions - 6.69 inches, OLED screen
- Capacity: 512GB memory and 12GB ram
- Chip: SnapDragon 8+ Gen1 Mobile Platform
- Security: Will be integrated with elements of security (against Android's open source weakness)
What is Solana Mobile Stack (SMS)?
Solana Mobile Stack is an ecosystem of products that will accompany Solana Mobile.
The key components will include 4 main elements:
- Seed Vault - The solution to store passwords/passphrases in a secure software and in an execution environment ⇒ makes signing transactions fast and easy.
- Mobile Wallet Adapter - Adapter to help sign transactions sent from apps to Android operating system.
- Solana Dapps Store - A repository of decentralized applications for people to download for free.
- Solana Pay - Solana's fast payment service.
In addition, to help developers easily build applications on Solana Mobile, the Solana team has prepared SDKs or Solana mobile stack SDKs. This is a set of tools and software for the development of Solana's product ecosystem on Solana Mobile.
SMS SDK is built as custom frameworks and specialized with Solana's blockchain technology coding language like Rust C, C++.
The reason for launching Solana Mobile
Web3 is operating in a non-user-friendly space
The current state of Web3 applications operating as web/browser-only applications is mainly.
Being able to use the applications on the market well by the average user requires a certain amount of blockchain knowledge. That difficulty is enough to make them tired of experiencing more products no matter how good it is.
Some projects are requiring users to login wallets for each use on websites This is extremely inconvenient for users of multiple wallets and even has cases where wallets have conflicting issues in the code. each other on the same browser when using multiple wallets in different chains.
⇒ Affects user experience by making it difficult for them to access applications.
Starting from essential needs
Every solution must be rooted in the user's problem.
The thought of implementing Saga and Solana Mobile Stack arose out of user practical problems and especially in the Web3 issue.
One of those problems is the inconvenience of a part of users who have to leave intimate parties, miss meetings, and even vacations with families just to come back to look for new items. passphrase and sign important transactions at home.
Therefore, Solana came up with an initiative to help solve this problem of users when combining blockchain technology applications with integrated layers to target Web3 and optimize user experience.
⇒ Help users access/sign transactions/experiences on DApps on solana easily and conveniently.
How Solana Mobile Stack and Saga Solved the Problem
Solution
Solana aims at a dual solution, enhancing user experience combining mobile phones, Solana Mobile stack with Web3.
Implementation steps
Step 1: Allow Dapps to run in 1 wallet platform (e.g. Phantom, Coin98 Wallet)
That is, dapps will be present in an app store on the wallet, but users do not need to go to a web browser and then enter the website address of the application / service that people want to access ⇒ Optimize user experience on the phone product itself.
Step 2: Build Solana Mobile Stack (SMS)
Building SMS aims to make the wallet become a layer in the operating system of the phone ⇒ From there, allowing Dapps to run natively like an application on the phone (e.g. Facebook, Tiktok, .. ) and can be easily downloaded from the SMS app store (AppStore version 2).
For ease of understanding:
Imagine a wallet platform that includes passphrases similar to Apple ID accounts that make it easy for anyone to download/access Dapps. Instead of on the Web3 space, dapps will be connected to each other on browsers (problem that reduces user experience)
⇒ Solana Mobile takes a different approach as Solana creates a new layer to attach the wallet platform to the operating system of the phone and has a repository of applications (Solana Dapps Store) that will be easily downloaded from a phone .
⇒ Eliminate logging in each wallet to interact with this app/web and then logout and log back in another wallet to use with another web/app.
That is, a phone will allow the wallet platform to be built-in into the machine system. Users will be required to log in the passphrases of the wallets everyone has on Solana to access dapps and switch between wallets as needed.
Everyone who has ever used Coin98 Wallet will understand. However, they will have some differences between the two platforms above in the following factors:
- (1) Space to connect Web3 applications.
- (2) Scale of integrated chains.
- (3) User experience.
Analyze the above factors and compare with similar platform (Coin98 Wallet) in terms of:
(1) Space to connect Web3 apps
- SMS: Dapps run native on the phone
- Coin98 Wallet: Browsers + Dapps on the wallet platform
(2) Scale of integrated chains
- SMS: Solana (immediately), Co Founder Solana - Raj Gojal confirmed other projects/blockchains can also build on SMS because of its open source code.
- Coin98 Wallet: Many different chains, specifically over 50 chains.
(3) User Experience
This is a difficult factor to compare because it depends on the user's perception. But if we take a preliminary look at the time of June 2022, then:
- SMS: Dapps will run natively on the phone, so it will be as easy for users to access as using normal apps. ⇒ Optimize the experience.
- Coin98 Wallet: Integrating many Dapps + browser applications on many different chains on a single access point ⇒ Wide coverage and many options for users to use many assets in many different chains ⇒ Need to wait for feedback users about the product.
Comment: If SMS allows Dapps to run on the wallet platform layer and work effectively to bring optimal user experience. If this model is successful => this could be a revolution for the Web3, Dapps and smartphone industry.
Disadvantages of SMS
Resource consuming
One of the first drawbacks when implementing SMS is that the workload will increase for the team and resources will be spread from developing the blockchain to developing SMS and the tools that make Solana Mobile work. smooth motion.
In particular, the Solana team needs to focus more resources on this segment when the delivery time for the first phone is only about 6 months (until early 2023).
Depends on 3rd party
Solana has to cooperate with a third party, Osmo, to produce phone hardware. Therefore, they had to convince the hardware supplier to support the integration of Solana's technology and SMS into the machine. Because of entrusting another party to make the phone, Solana will be dependent on a 3rd party.
When problems occur from the hardware supplier (ie beyond Solana's control), Solana will not be able to handle it independently.
⇒ The product bears the risk of the supplier.
Risks of using Android operating system
The Android operating system is open source, so the possibility that applications on Solana Mobile are subject to the same constant risks as on other phones running Android is quite high.
However, Solana has announced that it will have its own security mechanism Vault Seed to protect the seed phrase (wallet recovery clusters). As for the deeper security features, it has not been announced specifically.
According to the statistics of the famous anti-virus platform - Kaspersky, in 2021 alone, 99% of mobile malware is designed to attack Android phones with 35,000 malware programs deployed.
⇒ Risks from running Android OS.
Solana Mobile's development potential
The smartphone user market is huge, amounting to 7.7 billion people worldwide. Of which, there are 6 billion phones used globally while that number of desktop/computer devices is only about 2 billion devices (according to Celo Org). By 2027, the number of phone users is predicted to reach 7.69 billion (According to Statista).
In addition, there are currently more than 100 million people holding different types of digital assets.
In the context Solana is a pioneer in the field of smartphones operating on the blockchain platform towards web3 and user experience. If the Solana Mobile ecosystem can serve about 1-10% of the number of users, it is also about 70-700 million people - a very large number.
⇒ The potential of the smartphone market is huge and there is still a lot of room for development, especially in the Web3 smartphone blockchain niche for Solana Mobile to invade.
Will Solana succeed when launching Solana Mobile?
This market is very potential, but it is very difficult to predict how promising they are in realizing this dream.
To have a preliminary assessment, we need to review Solana's resources at the present time.
Intrinsic resources
A. Solana's Blockchain Technology
However, technology has been a major development in the industry. However, the occurrence of errors is a frequent occurrence and there are points that are not completely stable or the security is not high.
For example, the Solana network is often suspended for many reasons such as spam bots NFT, ..
If Solana is to develop mobile, they need to improve the quality of Solana's underlying technology and perfect the pieces on the system to meet the criteria towards mass adoption such as:
- Security (Security).
- High transaction speed (Speed).
- Stability is maintained throughout.
- Ability to combine with different chains (Interoperability).
- User-friendly UI (User Experiment).
All of the above factors have competitors ranked above Solana in all factors (blockchain has an advantage over Solana) such as security (Ethereum), Interoperability (Polkadot, Cosmos, EVM chains),...
B. The vast Solana ecosystem
Solana is a large ecosystem with a variety of outstanding projects in many different fields such as:
- DeFi: Orca, Raydium, Serum, Coin98 Exchange.
- NFT: Magic Eden, Okay Bears,...
- Wallet: Phantom, Coin98 Wallet.
- Move-to-Earn: StepN,...
- Oracle: Pyth Network, Band, Chainlink,...
- Assets Management: Ape Board.
- Staking: Marinade.
- And many projects in key areas serve diverse user needs and infrastructure to meet the conditions for Solana's further development.
Solana is in the top 5 markets in terms of total value locked in protocols (TVL), currently at $2.71 billion (according to DeFiLIama).
Learn more: Solana Ecosystem Overview
C. CEO of Solana Labs is a person with a background in chips and hardware
It is known that CEO of Solana Labs - Aeya Kovenko used to be an engineer with 13 years of experience at Qualcomm. This is one of the major US semiconductor manufacturing companies with the outstanding product being the Snap Dragon chip that is widely used on Microsoft devices.
In addition, SMS will be a campaign led by head of development Jason Keats (Ipad Pro designer). With his extensive experience, expertise, and understanding of mobile-related needs and user experiences, Jason is a key player in the future development of the SMS product suite.
D. Backing from FTX, Sam Bank and Alameda Research
FTX exchange, Sam Bank, Alameda Research and Solana ecosystem have a close relationship with each other in many aspects, such as financial issues or relationships.
Strong revenue source from FTX Exchange - Crypto exchange in the top 3 largest Crypto exchanges after Binance, Coinbase is a solid foundation for Solana's development.
Not only that, Alameda Research is a market market team and a top tier investment fund in the market that is always ready to be behind Solana.
⇒ From the above resources, financial issues are not a big concern of Solana.
Other objective issues
A. Crypto/blockchain market is not yet widely accepted
For the mindset of the majority of non-crypto users, they still consider crypto and blockchain a risky market, as it is well known through the sharp rise/fall of crypto assets and Bitcoin.
According to research by a leading university in cryptocurrency, blockchain technology is accepted or not depends on whether the Crypto market develops or not. That is because the crypto market is the face and door for investors to know about Crypto, thereby having the potential to become a user in this world.
The roadmap for everyone to get access to blockchain technology is largely as follows:
- Know Bitcoin and there are profit opportunities in the emerging crypto market.
- Make a big splash with billion-dollar companies + strong appreciation coins.
- Investors are ready to find opportunities in this market.
- Projects on the market or in different ecosystems have the task of creating values that attract investors and retain them as users, serving needs in all aspects.
Examples of needs and featured products:
- Convenient payments - wallet solutions with an intermediary connection to CeFi platforms.
- Play the game for profit - Axie Infinity .
- Running has both health and money - StepN .
- Meet Kpop idols and players in your favorite sports through Fan Token.
B. Bridges between chains are still subject to frequent damage and hacking risks
Multichain is a trend and projects are gradually oriented to Web3 to be able to connect all data and applications together easily. The role of bridges between chains is extremely important.
However, this piece of infrastructure is vulnerable to attacks when it has many limitations. The attacks with the largest damage value (e.g. Ronin Bridge - $624 million, PolyNetwork - $611 million) were all aimed at bridges. That shows that the risks in connecting chains and projects are still large.
Bridges will need to be given a high level of focus and reinforce the “trade” barrier between these critical chains.
C. Other projects in the market are still unfinished
The blockchain and crypto market includes many projects that, after a while of operation, have revealed weaknesses in operating models, such as the case of Terra that led to general market panic.
Some game projects like Solana have not been able to come into operation yet, like Star Atlas, BNB Chain metaverse projects like Highstreet or Radio Caca's USM still need more time to develop.
Blockchain technologies are still competing in many aspects such as transaction speed, transaction fees, security as well as they upgrade the chain themselves with upgrades like Ethereum with The Merge, BNB Chain with BAS side chain, etc. .
The above shows that the blockchain market is still in the testing and upgrading stage. Even Solana is having problems with congestion, and these are challenges that the entire blockchain industry needs to overcome.
D. The legal authorities do not have a specific legal corridor
As of June 2022, only El Salvador is the first country in the world to accept legal Bitcoin payments. Other countries are still in the process of consideration and research (Canada, Kazakhstan, USA..), and even some countries have shown a prohibitive attitude (China).
Learn more: El Salvador - The world's first "Bitcoin City"
Because major countries in the world such as the US, Russia, and China do not have a specific legal corridor to manage the crypto market as well as official decisions. Therefore, smaller countries are also more hesitant to accept this market.
These are also objective macro factors between countries and the global financial system that will somewhat hinder the crypto market in mass adoption.
General comment
All of the above factors are preventing and are challenges that Solana Mobile Stack needs to overcome in order to succeed and be widely applied.
However, as the other objective and subjective factors gradually improved, the project teams tried to perfect their products in different key areas. From there, pull the entire blockchain industry to develop sustainably and be legalized by governments
⇒ Solana Mobile Stack inherits the necessary elements to form the basis for belief in the development of this technology.
Epilogue
At the time of June 2022, when CEO Solana Labs just announced the product launch, the plan to bring Solana phones to users needs to be until 2023. The next 6 months to more than 1 year period is The race to draw water that Solana team needs to work at full capacity to launch the product in the most proper way.
During this time, coinciding with the market downtrend, teams in all ecosystems in the Crypto market will have time to accumulate, research and build/complete existing/new products.
At the same time, this is also the time when stacked ponzi models are broken ⇒ projects/models that fail to prove effective, perform poorly or scam will be more or less eliminated ⇒ the market Crypto in 2023 will molt with better platforms, more sustainable development.
Since then, it is a stepping stone to create a premise for objective factors to gradually become supportive of Solana Mobile and the Solana system to develop further.
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