Solana dev says new crypto phone ‘feels like madness’ — but it already has $65m in pre-orders

DL News · 2024-05-22T15:33:02.000Z

At first glance, Steven Laver doesn’t seem like the guy who would be leading the most audacious project in crypto. The 43-year-old software engineer worked on the BlackBerry back in the 2000s, and then helped develop the Windows Phone app store at Microsoft. He didn’t even work in crypto until early 2022. Nevertheless, Laver is now the lead software engineer on Solana Labs’ push to change the crypto experience by putting blockchain capabilities in the palm of your hand. “This has that big, sky’s the limit energy,” Laver told DL News in a rare interview. “This feels like madness, but at the same time, this feels like the end result.” That result is Solana’s second mobile phone. It’s called Chapter 2 and is slated to come out in early 2025. Preorders for the new device cost $500, and Solana says it has more than 130,000 preorders. That’s $65 million in preorders. Bold bet It’s a bold bet for the four-year-old blockchain network. Mobile telephony, one of the most regulated industries on the planet, is dominated by Apple and Samsung. Why would Solana, a DeFi stalwart with a token worth $82 billion and one of the hottest brand names in crypto, make such a huge gamble on manufacturing hardware? “It’s a tough, tough ask,” Chris Lewis, an independent telecoms analyst with over 40 years in the industry, told DL News. The answer: control. The Chapter 2 is Solana’s bid to liberate crypto from the desktop and the domination of the app platforms at Apple and Google. The Silicon Valley powerhouses have long plagued crypto-friendly mobile developers by charging huge fees or banning apps from their platforms. In a world where investing, shopping, banking and everything else happens on a smartphone, crypto is still fighting for a foothold. “We’re used to everyone bringing a laptop to dinner, so you don’t miss a drop or a claim,” Emmett Hollyer, head of business development and product at Solana Labs, told DL News. Memecoin madness Solana, of course, isn’t the first crypto venture to try and pry open the incumbents’ grip. Over the last decade, more than a dozen bespoke crypto phones have hit the market. But none have gained meaningful traction. Last year, Solana gave it a shot with the Android-powered Solana Saga. Customers scooped up about 20,000 of the $600 handsets, which was well short of the 50,000 unit goal. In comparison, Apple shipped more than 80 million iPhones in the fourth quarter alone. But Saga hit on what has emerged as a not-so-secret weapon in crypto phone development — memecoins. The device was delivered with a dog-themed memecoin called BONK. Somehow, collectors fell in love with BONK and its price soared 560% last December. When investors scrambled for the phone on secondary markets, Hollyer and his team realised they’d stumbled on a new type of marketing play. Now they’re producing a sequel. ‘Consumer hardware is hard, but phones are an order of magnitude beyond that.’ Steven Laver, Solana While the company declined to disclose how much money it is investing in Chapter 2, it’s not a small number. “Consumer hardware, in general, is hard, but phones are an order of magnitude beyond that,” Laver said. “Building a phone is an exercise as much in operations, logistics, and compliance as it is the underlying technology.” The project comes as Solana rides a wave of momentum. Its native token, SOL, has soared 78% this year compared to a 64% jump in the price of Ethereum, according to CoinGecko. With a market value of $81 billion, Solana is the fifth biggest digital asset. Solana has also largely captured the red-hot memecoin market. Activity was so high in March that the network generated more fees than heavyweight Ethereum — no small task. Lingering questions Still, questions linger about the wisdom of launching a mobile phone. “What is it you’re bringing in,” Lewis said. “Is it just the security? Is it a new interface? Is it the latest chip power? I think those are the questions you’ve got, and then to be able to build the brand and get it out into the market.” And, perhaps most importantly, is there really demand for a crypto phone? Deep roots Solana’s project has deep roots in Silicon Valley’s mobile scene. It sprang from a little-known but well-regarded project called Essential, which was founded by Andy Rubin, the brains behind Android at Google. After Essential shut down in 2020, some staffers launched another mobile company called OSOM. A couple of years later, it developed the OV1 phone, which, sporting a ceramic, titanium body, became a cult fave. If you look closely, it also looks a lot like the Solana Saga. That’s because they are almost the same. Solana Labs and OSOM announced a partnership in June 2022. In February 2022, Laver landed at Solana right in the thick of the Saga development. A Canadian native, Laver studied computer science at the University of Waterloo in Ontario (the same alma mater as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin). Iconic products Laver was present at the creation of several iconic products. He worked on a whole range of BlackBerries, made by the Canadian firm Research in Motion, which introduced handheld emailing and texting to corporate life. At Microsoft, Laver worked on what would become the Windows Phone app store. He’s also dabbled in other consumer electronics products such as the smart watch manufacturer, Fitbit, plus stints at Apple and Google. ‘There’s a lot of low- and mid-budget Android phones that feel like a cheap car dashboard from the late ‘90s.’ Steven Laver, Solana Labs From the get-go, Laver said the Saga was designed to have a satisfying heft in the hand and an elegant matte finish. “There’s a lot of low- and mid-budget Android phones that feel like a cheap car dashboard from the late ‘90s,” said Laver. Solana’s device was engineered with three features not found on normal handsets. The first was called the Seed Vault. This stores the seed phrases users employ to send and receive crypto. Saga’s security is somewhere in between an internet-connected crypto wallet such as Phantom or MetaMask and the vault-like Ledger, said Laver. It’s not meant to hold millions of dollars of crypto, but you could buy a few cocktails with it. Challenging Apple and Google The Solana Mobile Stack lets mobile app developers build crypto apps for the phone. And the Solana dApp Store provides projects with a marketplace for their handiwork. It’s designed to be an end run around the Apple App Store, which has taken down some of the larger crypto apps in the industry, perhaps most notably MetaMask in October. It was later reinstated. In-app purchases on the Apple app store are also subject to a whopping 30% fee. As for Google’s Play Store, it eased its crypto policy last summer. But it, too, typically charges developers fees between 15% and 30%. Laver says the Solana Labs team is going to let crypto be crypto. “We take a much lighter hand with our policy,” he said. “We’re trying our best to get out of the way.” Profit centre Solana Labs doesn’t charge any fees, except for the costs for posting the app’s metadata to the Solana blockchain. “This isn’t a profit centre for us,” said Laver. The platform already includes the NFT marketplace Magic Eden and the decentralised exchange Jupiter. ‘We need to find a way to give builders a reasonable path to distribution.’ Emmett Hollyer, Solana Labs Hollyer hopes it puts pressure on Silicon Valley to take a more enlightened approach to crypto. “Hopefully, Google and Apple will come to their senses and see what could be possible if they relax some of their fee structures and some of their restrictive policies,” he said. “Until then, we need to find a way to give builders a reasonable path to distribution.” Solana recently recorded its 100th dapp. “We’re just starting to get to this point where developers are starting to see the value of building for a phone like Saga,” Laver said. BONK goes boom But the big change in the Solana phone development was BONK, the $2.1 billion meme coin. Solana threw in $750 in BONK tokens with every phone. When the token skyrocketed in December, 30 million BONK tokens were integrated directly into the Solana Saga phone. An arbitrage trade emerged. “With the BONK, I bought other memecoins,” Lui Kohl, product manager at token vesting platform Streamflow, told DL News. “Overall, I think I turned $800 BONK into $4,000, so it was monetarily well worth it.” Thanks to BONK buzz, Hollyer said Solana was able to sell the rest of its phones in three days. The episode also spurred anticipation in Chapter 2, which will come loaded with five memecoins. Kohl, for one, has already pre-ordered the phone. Absorbing the lessons of crypto mobile marketing, Laver conceded he was “personally a little confused.” “Blockchain is just a little different,” he said. “At the end of the day, putting a real physical product, that is well integrated, in people’s hands, that’s why I do this.” Liam Kelly is a Berlin-based DL News’ correspondent. Contact him at liam@dlnews.com.

乍一看，史蒂文·拉沃爾 (Steven Laver) 似乎不像是會領導加密貨幣領域最大膽項目的人。
這位 43 歲的軟件工程師早在 21 世紀就參與了黑莓手機的研發，後來幫助微軟開發了 Windows Phone 應用商店。
直到 2022 年初他纔開始從事加密貨幣工作。
儘管如此，Laver 現在是 Solana Labs 的首席軟件工程師，致力於通過將區塊鏈功能放在您的手掌中來改變加密體驗。
“這股能量非常巨大，沒有極限，”拉沃爾在一次罕見的採訪中告訴 DL News。“這感覺很瘋狂，但同時，這感覺就像最終的結果。”
這個成果就是 Solana 的第二部手機。
這款設備名爲 Chapter 2，預計於 2025 年初上市。這款新設備的預訂價格爲 500 美元，Solana 表示其預訂量已超過 13 萬份。預訂金額高達 6500 萬美元。
大膽的賭注
對於成立四年的區塊鏈網絡來說，這是一個大膽的賭注。移動電話是全球監管最嚴格的行業之一，由蘋果和三星主導。
Solana 是一家 DeFi 巨頭，其代幣價值 820 億美元，也是加密貨幣領域最熱門的品牌之一，爲什麼它會在硬件製造方面進行如此大的投資呢？
從業 40 多年的獨立電信分析師克里斯·劉易斯 (Chris Lewis) 告訴 DL News：“這是一個非常艱難的要求。”
答案是：控制。
第 2 章是 Solana 試圖將加密貨幣從桌面和 Apple 和 Google 應用平臺的主導地位中解放出來。
長期以來，硅谷巨頭們一直通過收取高額費用或禁止其平臺上的應用程序來困擾加密友好型移動開發者。
在這個投資、購物、銀行業務和其他一切都通過智能手機進行的世界裏，加密貨幣仍在爭奪立足之地。
Solana Labs 業務開發和產品主管 Emmett Hollyer 告訴 DL News：“我們已經習慣了每個人都帶着筆記本電腦去喫飯，這樣你就不會錯過任何一次掉落或索賠。”
Memecoin 瘋狂
當然，Solana 並不是第一個試圖打破現有控制的加密貨幣企業。
過去十年，已有十多款定製加密手機進入市場。但沒有一款獲得實質性的關注。
去年，Solana 嘗試推出基於 Android 的 Solana Saga。這款售價 600 美元的手機售出了約 2 萬臺，距離 5 萬臺的目標還差得很遠。
相比之下，僅第四季度，蘋果 iPhone 的出貨量就超過 8000 萬部。
但 Saga 卻發現了加密手機開發中一種不那麼祕密的武器——memecoin。
該設備附帶一枚以狗爲主題的 memecoin，名爲 BONK。不知何故，收藏家們愛上了 BONK，去年 12 月其價格飆升了 560%。
當投資者在二級市場上爭相購買手機時，霍利爾和他的團隊意識到他們發現了一種新型的營銷手段。
現在他們正在製作續集。
“消費級硬件很難，但手機的難度要大得多。”
史蒂文·拉沃爾，索拉納
雖然該公司拒絕透露在第二章中投資了多少錢，但這個數目並不小。
“總體來說，消費級硬件很難製造，但手機的難度要高出很多，”拉弗說。“製造一部手機不僅需要底層技術，還需要運營、物流和合規性。”
該項目正值 Solana 乘勢而上之際。據 CoinGecko 稱，其原生代幣 SOL 今年已飆升 78%，而以太坊的價格則上漲了 64%。
Solana 的市值爲 810 億美元，是第五大數字資產。
Solana 還在很大程度上佔領了炙手可熱的 memecoin 市場。3 月份的活動非常活躍，以至於該網絡產生的費用超過了重量級的以太坊——這可不是一件容易的事。
揮之不去的問題
然而，對於推出手機是否明智，仍然存在疑問。
“你引進的是什麼？”劉易斯說，“僅僅是安全性嗎？是新的界面嗎？是最新的芯片性能嗎？我想這些都是你要問的問題，然後才能打造品牌，將其推向市場。”
而且，也許最重要的是，加密手機真的有需求嗎？
深厚根基
Solana 的項目在硅谷的移動領域有着深厚的根基。
它源自一個鮮爲人知但備受推崇的項目 Essential，該項目由谷歌 Android 幕後策劃者安迪·魯賓 (Andy Rubin) 創立。
2020 年 Essential 倒閉後，一些員工創辦了另一家名爲 OSOM 的移動公司。幾年後，該公司開發了 OV1 手機，這款手機採用陶瓷鈦金屬機身，深受消費者喜愛。
如果仔細觀察，它看起來也很像 Solana Saga。因爲它們幾乎一模一樣。Solana Labs 和 OSOM 於 2022 年 6 月宣佈建立合作伙伴關係。
2022 年 2 月，拉沃爾 (Laver) 入駐位於佐賀開發中心的 Solana。
拉弗是加拿大人，在安大略省滑鐵盧大學學習計算機科學（與以太坊聯合創始人 Vitalik Buterin 是同一所母校）。
標誌性產品
拉沃爾參與了多款標誌性產品的開發。他參與了加拿大公司 Research in Motion 生產的一系列黑莓手機的開發，這些手機將手持電子郵件和短信功能引入了企業生活。
在微軟，拉沃爾參與了 Windows Phone 應用商店的開發。他還涉足其他消費電子產品，例如智能手錶製造商 Fitbit，並曾在蘋果和谷歌工作過一段時間。
“許多低價和中價位的 Android 手機看起來就像 90 年代末的廉價汽車儀表板。”
Steven Laver，Solana 實驗室
從一開始，拉沃爾就表示，Saga 的設計目標是擁有令人滿意的握感和優雅的啞光效果。
“許多中低價位的 Android 手機看起來就像 90 年代末的廉價汽車儀表板，”拉沃爾說。
Solana 的設備設計了三種普通手機所沒有的功能。
第一個被稱爲種子庫。
它存儲用戶用於發送和接收加密貨幣的種子短語。Laver 說，Saga 的安全性介於互聯網連接的加密貨幣錢包（如 Phantom 或 MetaMask）和類似保險庫的 Ledger 之間。
它並不能容納數百萬美元的加密貨幣，但你可以用它買幾杯雞尾酒。
挑戰蘋果和谷歌
Solana Mobile Stack 讓移動應用開發者可以爲手機構建加密應用。Solana dApp Store 爲項目提供了一個展示其作品的市場。
它旨在繞過蘋果應用商店，該商店已經關閉了業內一些較大的加密應用程序，其中最引人注目的可能是 10 月份的 MetaMask。後來它又恢復了。
蘋果應用商店的應用內購買也需繳納高達 30% 的手續費。
至於谷歌 Play Store，它於去年夏天放寬了加密政策。但它通常也會向開發者收取 15% 至 30% 的費用。
Laver 表示，Solana Labs 團隊將讓加密貨幣成爲加密貨幣。
“我們的政策寬鬆多了，”他說。“我們正竭盡全力避免這種情況。”
利潤中心
Solana Labs 不收取任何費用，除了將應用程序的元數據發佈到 Solana 區塊鏈的費用外。
拉沃爾表示：“這不是我們的利潤中心。”
該平臺已經包括 NFT 市場 Magic Eden 和去中心化交易所 Jupiter。
“我們需要找到一種方法，爲建築商提供合理的分銷途徑。”
Emmett Hollyer，Solana Labs
霍利爾希望這能給硅谷施加壓力，使其對加密貨幣採取更加開明的態度。
“希望谷歌和蘋果能夠清醒過來，看看如果他們放寬一些收費結構和一些限制性政策，會有什麼可能，”他說。“在那之前，我們需要找到一種方法，爲開發商提供一條合理的分銷途徑。”
Solana 最近記錄了它的第 100 個 dapp。
“我們纔剛剛開始達到這一點，開發人員開始看到爲 Saga 這樣的手機開發應用程序的價值，”Laver 說道。
BONK 蓬勃發展
但 Solana 手機開發中最大的變化是 BONK，價值 21 億美元的 meme 代幣。Solana 每發佈一部手機都會投入 750 美元的 BONK 代幣。
當 12 月份代幣暴漲時，3000 萬枚 BONK 代幣被直接集成到 Solana Saga 手機中。套利交易應運而生。
“我用 BONK 購買了其他 memecoin，”代幣歸屬平臺 Streamflow 的產品經理 Lui Kohl 告訴 DL News。“總的來說，我認爲我將 800 美元的 BONK 變成了 4,000 美元，所以從金錢角度來看，這是非常值得的。”
霍利爾說，得益於 BONK 的熱議，Solana 能夠在三天內賣掉剩下的手機。
這一集還激發了人們對第二章的期待，該章將預裝五種 memecoin。Kohl 已經預訂了這款手機。
在吸取了加密移動營銷的教訓後，拉沃爾承認他“個人有點困惑”。
“區塊鏈只是有點不同，”他說。“歸根結底，我要做的是把一個真正整合好的實體產品交到人們手中，這就是我做這件事的原因。”
Liam Kelly 是 DL News 駐柏林記者。聯繫他的郵箱是 liam@dlnews.com。

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