True story—small equipment, big stage
How can ordinary people outside the circle experience everything inside the circle?
Last month, the author received a Jambo mobile phone when I was gathering with friends in a restaurant. Another friend who was traveling with me and knew nothing about Web3 curiously asked me what Jambo meant and what the densely printed text on the back of the phone was. What is a logo?
After briefly talking about concepts such as industry organizations, projects, Play 2 Earn and wallets, his response was:
"Great, I'm worried about how to get involved in this industry. Are there any mobile phones with these functions now?
At this moment, I suddenly realized that people do not lack understanding of encryption, but what is more lacking is an entrance that brings everything.
Today we always hear the concept of infrastructure, and we have too much L1/L2, DA, interoperability and other infrastructure... But these are actually not basic at all, and more people may not have entered the door of Web3. , then it is actually meaningless to discuss the basic structure of the house.
All the so-called Web3 infrastructure is far less straightforward than having a mobile phone at your fingertips.
When the BTC/ETH ETF good news spreads frequently across the ocean, the way for financial elites to enter Web3 has begun. But for more ordinary people, it is still difficult to enter Web3.
Thinking back to giving your parents a smartphone, you can play various shopping and video clips after not seeing each other for a few months; if you gave a Web3 mobile phone to young people in more emerging countries, wouldn't many things be completely different?
Fortunately, Jambo is doing just that.
When our understanding of Jambo was still about building Superapps for specific regions, it had shipped nearly 500,000 units of its Web3 mobile phones, covering more than 120 countries and emerging markets around the world.
Compared with other Web3 mobile phones, this data is already a very remarkable result. On the road to popularizing Web3, every additional Web3 phone means one more potential user.
At the recently held Solana Breakpoint 2024 conference, Jambo struck while the iron was hot and announced its new JamboPhone 2 --- higher hardware specifications and even equipped with an encrypted special version of AI, JamboGPT.
Using both hard and soft tactics, and breaking through from the entrance, Jambo, the "mobile infrastructure provider", may be quietly rising in the encryption world:
More than 70 leading players in the crypto ecosystem, including Solana, Tether, Aptos, OKX and Galxe, have all reached cooperative relationships with Jambo --- from promoting the use of USDT on Solana to more outsiders through the game Learn about Web3 through various tasks, and then build related applications into Jambo mobile phones for different encryption projects...
From deep-rooted African stereotypes to Mass Adoption shipping fiend, what is Jambo doing today? To what extent have the products and ecology achieved?
Press the power button on your Jambo phone to start a journey of interpretation.
From Africa to global emerging markets, Mass Adoption’s journey
If you’re new to crypto, you may not be familiar with Jambo’s past.
In fact, Jambo was founded as early as early 2022; but at that time its business focus was on Africa. In a wild, backward and chaotic land, Web3 found a foothold for its development.
As its founder James Zhang said: "I think in Africa, there is no money to save because there are only 1% of the super rich and 99% of the poor. So we took a different approach, which is to help ordinary people make money."
Therefore, the starting point of Jambo is simple and direct. Based on the idea of helping ordinary people in Africa to make money, they built the Jambo Super APP. Through the logic of "learn, play, and make money", the local people may not even have a bank account and lack of job opportunities. young people get income-generating opportunities in this super app.
Nearly 60% of Africa's population is under the age of 24, and nearly 50% of university graduates are unemployed.
And when most people walk barefoot, selling shoes to them is undoubtedly a blue ocean.
You can also feel in Jambo’s new slogan “You have a JamboPhone, you have a job” that the JamboPhone in the user’s hands is no longer just a mobile phone. It is understood that users can earn close to US$20 a week through the platform provided by JamboPhone.
At the same time, data from 2 years ago showed that Jambo has been deployed in 14 countries (Morocco, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Zambia, etc. (America, Namibia, Madagascar and South Africa) has signed up more than 12,000 students to take carefully curated Web3 courses.
10-week course, locations provided by the university and more than 600 entity partners, hundreds of local outreach ambassadors enrolling students...
If that doesn’t push Mass Adoption, what does?
But starting to promote Mass Adoption in Africa does not mean staying in Africa; using apps to reach more people outside the circle does not mean only using this method of reaching people.
Due to the complexity of Web3 information, we often have cognitive inertia and label thinking in our understanding of a certain project, thinking that the business of a project will not change from beginning to end.
And in the past two years of Jambo's business development, starting from Africa, everything is paving the way for the larger Mass Adoption fantasy rafting.
As stated in "A Brief History of Humankind", human ancestors in ancient times migrated to many places starting from the African continent and gradually took root in various continents;
This also reminds the author that today's Web3 world is still in the wild stage, and after Jambo has accumulated successful experience and On Boarding experience in the African market, it has gradually moved to other emerging countries and markets.
The vast emerging markets in Latin America and Southeast Asia are more eager for the stable currency and financial system that cryptocurrency can bring to them.
Based on this, Jambo has expanded its business to 128 countries and regions including Brazil, Vietnam and Turkey, and is determined to be the Web3 Mobile Infrastructure for the entire emerging market.
The anchor point for the global spread of this infrastructure is the little Jambo Phone that the author mentioned in the invoice.
At this point, maybe you should abandon the stereotype that Jambo = Africa’s web3 big brother.
Today, Jambo has shifted its focus from superapp to mobile infrastructure. Official website data shows that it has shipped 500,000 Jambo Phones in 128 countries and regions.
At the same time, this mobile phone also comes with various functions of Web3, and has generated nearly 2 million new wallet registrations, and this number is still rising.
Judging from Jambo's official data panel, since May 24, Jambo wallet registrations are experiencing significant growth in emerging countries and markets around the world, and users outside the circle in Africa and Southeast Asia have shown strong momentum to join the circle.
Obviously, the experience in Africa has created best practices for Jambo. Wherever there is demand, successful experiences can be copied. It does not have to be limited to Africa, nor does it have to be limited to a certain application.
With hardware as the entrance, Mass Adoption also has a stable carrier for its drifting.
For example, when young people in South Korea were crazy about encryption due to national conditions and other reasons, Jambo also struck while the iron was hot and cooperated with local Kpop stars to jointly promote Jambo Phone, so that more audiences can develop from being interested to actually participating through Web3 mobile phones. Come to the application.
In the Southeast Asian market where Axie Infinity has verified P2E demand, Jambo is also actively cooperating with local chain game unions such as YGG to jointly popularize and promote Web3-related applications, and also introduce Jambo Phone to the target audience.
From applications to infrastructure, from a single market to global coverage, Jambo obviously has a different past and present.
$99, young people’s first Web3 ticket
Now that we mentioned the Jambo Phone, what exactly is in this phone that makes it a Web3 Mobie Infra?
What is more important than anything else is the price.
$99. Jambo Phone being cheap enough is a prerequisite for it to become a mobile Web3 infrastructure.
Beyond the perception of encryption veterans, a newcomer in an emerging country can get a smartphone for $99, which also integrates various Web3 applications. This may be the lowest threshold for Crypto Native:
**You don’t have to play Web3, but you can’t live without a mobile phone; but if you have a mobile phone, it’s only a matter of time before you play or not. **
If you argue that any mobile phone can be installed with Web3 applications, then you obviously underestimate the change in user habits caused by "pre-installation", and you cannot explain why the current mainstream Web2 applications are rushing to get a pre-installation quota on Android phones.
Therefore, a mobile Web3 customized basic equipment is actually better than various grand narrative infrastructure.
Web3 mobile is actually nothing new. There were Solana Saga 1st and 2nd generations before, and Jambo Phone was not the pioneer of this type of phone.
Don’t forget that the initial price of Saga 1 once reached $1,000, while the new Saga 2 is only an early-bird version and the price is over $500.
Of course, the airdrop value you get after holding Saga is far greater than the price of the phone itself, which is undoubtedly a good deal.
But here is the crux of the problem --- we think too much from the perspective of insiders:
Degen veterans naturally know where the gold mines are and how to use gold shovels to get the goods; but there are too many young people outside the circle who don’t even know how to make a wallet or deposit money.
Therefore, Saga is more like a top-down strategy, attracting crypto elites, technology upstarts and degen veterans.
Jambo, which is priced at US$99, is obviously a bottom-up strategy. It ensures all the functions at a low price and is mainly aimed at being the first Web3 ticket for young people outside the circle.
Rather than being a golden shovel, it is better to be a stepping stone first. From a product, marketing and ecological perspective, Jambo Phone is like a stepping stone to help Mass Adoption.
After knocking on the door, what exactly is in the Jambo Phone?
The most eye-catching thing is naturally the Jambo application of the same name that comes with it.
You can register a Jambo account and bind it to the IMEI of your mobile phone, and then the device is equivalent to having a Web3 identity; the Jambo application will automatically help you create a wallet seamlessly, and support the deposit and withdrawal of fiat currencies in permitted countries.
Under the main account Jambo, the system has also designed various options such as daily login and game tasks, using a gamified Quest to Earn method to help players with mobile phones quickly experience various Web3 games, DeFI, and DEX and other applications.
It is worth mentioning that these task rewards are displayed with an intuitive USD (dollar) symbol, which directly tells everyone the corresponding value after the task is completed, and also reduces the cost for novices to understand various stable coins.
In addition, Jambo Points have also become a supplement to direct rewards, and the entire reward process is gradual; at the same time, the activation gameplay of various tasks also gradually cultivates user stickiness. When it is finally necessary to convert into tokens, we will learn the related concepts and gameplay of Crypto. The entire The understanding gradient to get started is not too steep.
Therefore, in addition to a normal mobile phone, Jambo Phone actually integrates multiple functions of wallet + ID + P2E/Q2E + education. At the same time, various Web3 games are pre-installed, which is more suitable for young people in emerging markets to play and earn money. need.
On this basis, this Web3 mobile phone also started its own iteration.
At Solana Breakpoint 2024 held in Singapore a few days ago, Jambo also brought the new JamboPhone 2.
Compared with the previous generation, the first thing the second generation mobile phone brings is the improvement of hardware performance. The memory, storage and battery capacity are “larger”, which is undoubtedly more suitable for long-term use and playing Web3 games;
Another most attractive update is the phone’s own AI function for encryption users, JamboGPT.
As the encryption user version of ChatGPT, JamboGPT is fine-tuned based on the knowledge of the encryption industry and can achieve real-time data collection to tune the original model.
Public information shows that this feature was created by Jambo in collaboration with LoveAI and Questflow; the integration of software and hardware for encryption users has begun to take shape on this phone.
More importantly, Jambo 2 is still priced at $99.
Same price, cooler features. Young people may well deserve their first Web3 ticket.
True DePIN, SuperInfra connects to the Web3 ecosystem
With the mobile phone as the hardware anchor, Jambo's journey to expand the ecosystem becomes clearer.
When its own Jambo APP becomes the traffic portal for new people, more types of encryption applications and projects will be easy to cooperate with this phone.
For example, Solana announced a partnership with Jambo in July and is working with stablecoin giant Tether to provide financial and education solutions to emerging markets.
Users can also receive Solana’s SPL USDT by completing tasks in Jambo. For less developed regions where bank accounts are not widespread, this collaboration certainly provides the opportunity for crypto to disrupt from the edge.
At the same time, on Jambo Phone, we have also seen wallet and asset management applications such as Coin98, e-commerce applications with the potential to integrate crypto payments such as OKX and Coinbase wallet, SHEIN and Temu, as well as a variety of products including the popular Matr1x Fire. Web3 games...
In the encryption ecosystem, there is no dAPP that does not welcome incremental users, and pre-installed/default existence on a hardware is more important. Outside of the crypto ecosystem, traditional APP users can also use mobile phone hardware to divert traffic to dApps, and a traffic conversion pool model has been formed.
Also, don’t forget that this phone is also compatible with the popular DePIN track professional counterpart.
Nearly 500,000 mobile phone shipments are distributed in 128 countries around the world. If each mobile phone is regarded as a DePIN node to integrate more data contribution, collection and resource sharing encryption projects, then for the project, it is loaded in Customer acquisition is achieved naturally on Jambo. The construction of a DePIN network can be completed quickly, and the pressure of cold start will be relatively less.
Therefore, Jambo’s approach of combining software and hardware is to first roll out shipments to complete the coverage of mobile infrastructure, and then earn revenue through ecological gameplay and sharing of advertising, pre-installation and applications.
This is a solid business model proven by various mobile phone manufacturers in the Web2 era, and it is also applicable in the pioneering stage of Web3 infrastructure.
From SuperApp to SuperInfra, Jambo has actually gradually become stuck in an excellent hardware entry ecological niche.
The script is correct: top VCs set up the stage, hardware expansion
It is still necessary to emphasize that the investment lineup behind Jambo can be described as luxurious.
Jambo earlier received US$7.5 million in seed round financing from investors including Coinbase Ventures, Hashed and Tiger Global.
The Series A round in 2022 was US$30 million, led by Paradigm, with participation from Pantera Capital, Delphi Ventures, OKX Ventures and Gemini Frontier Fund.
Naturally, the top crypto VCs are also betting on Mass Adoption and breaking the circle; but for the same "infrastructure", Jambo may have got a more correct script.
For a $99 mobile phone, after accounting for various costs such as transportation, selling one may not be profitable. If VC's investment is subsidizing Jambo's hardware expansion, then the script is obviously different from most infrastructure projects--- through hardware subsidies, you first pay for real traffic and stickiness, and later make profits through value-added services, etc. .
This is a bit like Didi Taxi and Pinduoduo’s tens of billions of subsidies in the early days. The business itself is a loss-making business, but it gains users and stickiness.
Note that this is not the same as a simple airdrop subsidy for the project.
Users subsidized by airdrops are actually not loyal, but subsidizing a mobile phone that always has airdrop opportunities and forms a stimulating habit will obviously lead to much better results in terms of the final stickiness assessment.
VC builds the platform and hardware expands. This path is feasible based on business logic; but how far it can go requires further observation.
After three days of farewell, we can look forward to the future
Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, has a famous point: "do things that don't scale" (do things that are not easy to scale).
In fact, he is encouraging entrepreneurs to adopt manual, inefficient, and non-scalable methods to promote business growth and development in the early stages.
From this perspective, Jambo’s previous deep cultivation in Africa was to do things that are not scalable and to accumulate experience according to local conditions to acquire customers and expand.
But after three days of separation, we can look forward to the future.
These things that are not easy to expand paved the way for Jambo to move from the established path to hardware globalization, and also created the possibility for greater Mass Adoption.
From being unscalable to scalable, I am afraid only you know the effort and transformation involved. But the result will be known to the capital market and users, and they will make reasonable pricing and judgments on the success of the project.
At the just-concluded Solana Breakpoint 2024, the founder of Jambo also mentioned on stage that the well-known Meme project Bonk will also issue airdrops to users with Jambo mobile phones; at the same time, Jambo has opened its own flagships in Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia store, and this may just be the beginning.
Finally, the word Jambo actually comes from Swahili, a greeting widely translated as "hello."
I hope more and more people will say hello to WEB3.
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