Author: Jack Kubinec, Blockworks; Compiler: Bai Shui, Golden Finance
If Solana investors shift their focus away from their AI tokens, they will see some interesting products scheduled for release this year.
Of course, shipping dates always get delayed, but as of now, a series of Solana products is expected to launch in 2025. Solana Mobile's Seeker phone tops the list along with the complete version of Jump Crypto's Firedancer client. DePIN, crypto wearable technology, and Jito's re-staking platform are also areas to watch for new product launches.
The author of this newsletter believes that the most noteworthy product release will be Solana Seeker, the second phone created by Solana Mobile. The new phone is expected to launch in mid-2025.
Solana Mobile is developed by Solana Labs, the original Solana development company, and co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal are still working there. Perhaps due to its reputation, Seeker has attracted dozens of Solana teams to join its so-called dApp store.
The Seeker order section comes from interest in mobile-related token airdrops, which turned out to be quite profitable for the last Solana phone. When we last spoke in October, Solana Mobile General Manager Emmett Hollyer mentioned that the currently priced $500 Seeker has received 145,000 pre-orders.
Following the hype of Seeker, the comprehensive launch of Firedancer may be next. Firedancer is a Solana validator client built from scratch by Jump Crypto. Firedancer is the software that Solana network validators can run to process transactions and build the blockchain. Since its development began in 2022, loyal fans of Solana have been praising it.
It has been revealed that Firedancer went live on September 2024 at the Solana Breakpoint conference, but it is currently only running in non-voting mode, meaning the client is still essentially bundled with an auxiliary wheel. No one really knows whether or when Firedancer will be fully operational, and the team hasn't done much promotion. The client's GitHub repository shows two code commits related to voting transactions over the past month.
Despite a slight decline in interest from cryptocurrency chatter about DePIN, I have been keeping an eye on a Solana DePIN release this year. DAWN is a favorite in the cryptocurrency space, aiming to become a decentralized internet service provider, planning to launch on the mainnet in 2025.
Speaking of industries where interest has declined amid the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, the Jito re-staking platform is expected to be launched in about a month, team members told me today.
Another uncertainty to watch is fitness technology. Pulse is a fitness tracking wristband connected to Solana, scheduled to ship in the first quarter. The second generation of Cudis' Solana smart ring just started shipping in December (I should note that my first Cudis ring rusted, although my second ring has been fine so far. However, buyers should be cautious).
