Author | Bob

Produced by｜Baihua Blockchain

At the end of last year, the launch of the Web3 mobile phone Solana Saga triggered a buying spree, and the subsequent premium in the secondary market was pushed up to US$15,000. Since the value of the various rights and interests attached to it is far higher than the device itself, many crypto users who did not participate in the limited sale event regretted it.

Recently, CoralApp, invested and incubated by Binance Labs, officially announced that its first Web3 mobile phone CoralPhone will be available for limited sale soon. CoralPhone is not only the first BNB mobile phone, but also the first multi-chain ecosystem aggregator, which has aroused heated discussion in the community: "BNB mobile phone" is coming? Can it bring a new wave of Web3 mobile phone dividends?

01. Multi-chain ecological intelligent Web3 entrance

Coral Phone, known as the first "AI flagship phone" in the Web3 field, is a dedicated smartphone launched by CoralApp for Web3 users. It will launch high-, mid- and low-end models to meet the needs of different countries and regions. It adopts the Android kernel layer architecture and is customized and optimized from the bottom of the system OS. It will be equipped with the top AI chip in the mobile phone industry, innovate and explore the integration of AI-driven technology and DePIN services, and bring new smart hardware and underlying system-level infrastructure and the entrance to the Web3 world to the encryption industry.

CoralApp, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, was founded in 2020 and is currently valued at $150 million. It was incubated and invested by Binance labs, and institutions such as Unicornverse, Gate, Skry Labs, AC Capital, PAKA, and OX Consulting participated in the first round of investment. The second round of investment institutions will be announced in the fourth quarter of 2024, and the financing scale is expected to exceed that of Solana's ecological mobile phone project Saga.

Dr. Bunmi Babajide, founder of CoralApp, has built an industry-leading software and hardware service team, which includes North American Internet hardware PhDs and authoritative experts in Web3 security, and has a reserve of technical talents such as original code development and optimization papers and patents. In terms of hardware manufacturing, it is also the first Web3 mobile phone project to sign a subscription agreement with hardware manufacturers in 12 countries around the world, fully guaranteeing global production, delivery, logistics, network access and other full-service.

Since CoralApp is the first project incubated by Binance Labs to launch a Web3 mobile phone, many people habitually regard CoralPhone as a "BNB mobile phone" according to the positioning of the previous Solana mobile phone Saga project, but in fact CoralApp is positioned as a hardware and system OS-level Web3 portal that supports multi-chain ecology. At present, CoralApp takes the lead in supporting the BNB Chain ecology and also cooperates with more than 150 projects in well-known public chain ecology such as Solana, Scroll, Swam, Tap, etc. In addition, the partners who are constantly expanding in the future will provide CoralPhone with diverse rights and benefits.

02. What are the advantages and benefits of Web3-specific devices?

Nowadays, almost everyone has a general-purpose smartphone to access Web3 applications, so why use Web3 dedicated devices? In fact, take the "Black Myth Wukong" incident that has just gone viral recently as an example. Since 3A masterpieces have very high hardware requirements, many people are struggling to decide whether to use a general-purpose Windows host or a dedicated PS5 or other device to play. As a dedicated gaming device, the PS5 has made great optimizations in hardware, system, and application platform. A PS5 with the same graphics card performance as a 3,000 yuan PS5 costs 6,000 to 8,000 yuan. At the same time, it also requires complex processes such as downloading, installing, and configuring by yourself, which is not as good as the "silky" experience of the dedicated gaming console PS5, which can be played right out of the box.

To date, there are more than 400 million crypto users worldwide. Web3 has become a mainstream industry, and the call for dedicated devices is getting louder and louder. Taking Coral Phone as an example, it can at least bring the following advantages and benefits:

1) Exclusive ecological dividends from official and third-party cooperation projects

Benefits! Benefits! Benefits! Important things should be said three times. Web3 projects, especially the super bonuses of new tracks, all early participants are "rich". At present, the Web3 mobile track has high costs and high initial investment in upstream and downstream industries, so there are few strong players. The early bonuses will be relatively concentrated, especially for early bird users. For this, you can refer to the early users of Solana Saga. CoralPhone, which is aimed at multi-chain users, will receive more benefits due to its wide cooperation.

CoralPhone is about to be released. In addition to enjoying lower prices, early bird users will definitely get the most benefits from various cooperative ecosystems. This is because high-quality Web3 project owners have seen the value behind Web3 mobile phone projects and ecosystems: it not only brings a low-threshold entry for new users, but also serves as a vertically precise "distribution center" for high-net-worth target users.

Users who are willing to spend money to try and test innovative Web3 phones are most likely deep Web3 users that major crypto communities are vying to attract. At the same time, the OS system-level Web3 entrance will bring a lot of DApp customization optimization, attention marketing and other cooperation. Third-party projects will be happy to distribute tokens and other benefits to Web3 phone users.

2) Zero-threshold entry user experience derived from underlying optimization

Over the past few years, the entire crypto community has been exploring capacity expansion, account abstraction, and other methods that can lower the threshold for use, improve user experience, and enable large-scale adoption of future Web3 applications.

In fact, even today when crypto assets have become mainstream assets, people still face various barriers to using Web3 applications on their mobile phones. Take the most basic crypto wallets, platform apps, and "Google Password Authenticator APP" for example. Android phones need to install Google Play, and Apple AppStore accounts need to change regions. These two operations seem simple, but in fact they directly discourage most entry-level users. If you say you can just search for it on a search engine and download it, then sorry, viruses and Trojans will follow. This is how many people's crypto assets have been stolen.

Whenever a newcomer asks about installing a wallet, Google Password Authenticator, and other operations, I have to say responsibly that the complexity is not something that can be solved in a few words. At this time, there is an urgent need for a smartphone that is friendly to crypto apps, has a built-in secure crypto chip management wallet, has its own app store for direct downloads without blocking, and has market software and flash news with eye-catching prompts, etc., which is optimized for Web3 users to get started right away.

3) A more secure Web3 APP and Dapp operation and interaction environment

Because it involves operations such as encrypted asset payment and on-chain interaction, a necessary condition for Web3 dedicated devices is definitely "security". Compared with general mobile phones, dedicated devices can provide a safer Web3 APP and Dapp operation and interaction environment.

Simply put, the mobile phones we use daily will definitely download a large number of apps provided by different third-party manufacturers and browse various web pages. These apps are constantly asking the operating system for various permissions, including uploading files, obtaining clipboard information, taking screenshots, viewing albums, etc. In general, the system operating environment of general devices is still relatively complex, and there will be concerns when it comes to asset interactions in Web3 applications.

Specialized devices can avoid and optimize these security issues. For example, CoralPhone optimizes the system from the bottom layer, which can not only provide a pure operating and interactive environment for encryption-related APPs and DApps, customize built-in system-level security rules and policies to isolate risks from daily use, but also improve the special call restrictions for sensitive permissions. At the same time, as mentioned above, the built-in application store can be specially categorized, and a team with rich experience in encryption security audits is also invited to audit the security of Web3 applications stationed on the platform.

Of course, as Web3-specific hardware, its own security is also a concern. So can CoralPhone guarantee the security of its own software and hardware?

CoralPhone is as transparent as general mobile phone accessories in terms of hardware. It has a built-in security encryption chip to manage sensitive operations, and most of the software can be open source, which is conducive to external auditing and supervision. CoralAPP itself can also find a professional security team to conduct security audits. At the same time, as an entry-level hardware for Web3 connected to the Internet, you can only store a small amount of change in the hot wallet for use and interaction with DAPP to participate in activities to receive benefits and other operations. It can also be used only as a viewing wallet. Cooperating with offline device signing operations will further enhance its security.

4) Unleashing the potential of DePIN and AI

According to the official roadmap of CoralApp, the high-end CoralPhone models not only pursue high configuration in the mobile phone industry, but also plan to be built into smart devices with DePIN services and AI capabilities.

Specifically, the DePIN track currently has a wide variety of IoT devices, and the design and equipment costs are high, while many Web3+AI projects have special requirements for AI chips. CoralPhone can optimize the design for DePIN by leveraging the customizability of its own hardware and OS system. It can also be used as an IoT device itself, while introducing the latest AI smart chips to provide corresponding services.

In general, while CoralPhone meets the Web3 entrance, it is also heading towards the future DePIN and AI tracks, leveraging the latest technological hardware exploration and innovation, encompassing the dividends of the two major tracks and unleashing the potential of DePIN and AI.

03. What is the difference between CoralPhone and Solana Saga?

Comparing the two most popular Web3 mobile projects, CoralPhone and Solana Saga, it is not difficult to find that compared to Saga, CoralPhone not only brings multi-chain benefits, but also makes more optimizations to the system, applications and community support. In the future, the models will be diversified, and the high, medium and low-end will be aimed at the needs of Web3 users in different countries and regions around the world. It will be more friendly to entry-level users and more conducive to market expansion.

04. Is the CoralPhone worth the money?

Judging from the official information, the Web3 exclusive device brought by CoralApp is quite sincere. Unlike the product that has not yet started, holding a PPT, it needs to deal with the upstream and downstream before going online, and conduct a lot of research and development, production, and testing. The initial investment is quite high, but in any case, users always have to see whether CoralPhone can be worth the money. After analysis, we believe that it is mainly reflected in the following points for your reference:

1) Special rights and dividends

As mentioned above, in addition to the CoralApp community's own ecological token, it has established cooperation with a large number of well-known public chain ecological projects such as BNB Chain, Solana, Scroll, Swam, Tap, etc. More cooperation will continue to expand in the future, and the most important of them is the benefits from high-quality top projects. Of course, as a DePIN and AI smart device, it will also be used as a dedicated device for mining high-quality projects in the DePIN and AI tracks in the future. It can be said to be a multi-chain Web3 hardware bonus "aggregator" with an entry-level out-of-the-box design.

2) Hardware cost performance

According to the relevant person in charge of CoralApp, the hardware production cost of the Coral Neural 3 (mid-range) model of CoralPhone is about $300. If the huge investment in software and hardware design and development is taken into account, the early bird price of $499/original price of $699 is still quite reasonable.

3) Ecological resource support from top institutional platforms

For projects incubated and invested by Binance Labs, it is not just about funding. The greater value lies in the support of various resources within the large ecosystem of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency platform, including publicity and promotion traffic, and high-quality project cooperation.

4) BNBChain’s ecological potential in a low-lying area

As we all know, the BNBChain ecosystem has not performed particularly well in this round of bull market, and the ecosystem is in a downturn. The BNBChain ecosystem urgently needs high-quality projects in the innovative track such as CoralAPP to inject new vitality and drive the BNBChain ecosystem out of the trough. At the same time, the Web3 mobile phone project that takes the lead in supporting the almost exclusive BNBChain ecological niche can also obtain unique dividends when the BNBChain ecosystem returns to the upward channel.

5) Future route development prospects

From CoralAPP's current layout, it is not difficult to find that what it wants to do is to make a good Web3 mobile phone software and hardware, focus on the basic product suite (including Coral Phone, Coral OS, Coral Mobile Stack and CoralApp), and make Web3 hardware devices spread across the global market a new traffic entrance. It is open to third-party project cooperation and builds a Web3 multi-chain interconnected ecological platform based on hardware and underlying OS support.

In fact, it is similar to the Xiaomi ecological chain in the mobile Internet. Xiaomi focuses on the development of hardware, OS UI, application store and ecological platform operation and maintenance, making mobile phones part of the mobile Internet traffic entrance, and then opening up various capabilities and interfaces to allow third-party projects to cooperate and access, and finally become one of the largest forces in the mobile Internet ecology.

05. Summary

The upcoming CoralPhone is undoubtedly a strong player in the Web3 mobile phone track. It not only brings new bonus opportunities to users, but also brings a new low-threshold entry to the Web3 industry. Through innovation and exploration of DePIN and the release of AI potential, it brings Web3 devices into a new development path, which deserves the close attention of the crypto community. In the future, whether this CoralAPP can continue to bring more dividends remains to be tested by the market and revealed by time. Let's wait and see.