Solana Labs co-founder teases chance of third cell system
Final month, Solana Cellular’s flagship web3 smartphone, the Saga, bought out. Final week the Solana Labs’ subsidiary launched its second telephone and bought over 40,000 preorders in lower than every week. However the firm shouldn’t be slowing down anytime quickly.
“After Saga sold out, it felt like there’s an opportunity and the timing in the market was right,” Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, stated on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast. “The timing [for the new phone] worked out right around that moment.”
And if the second system is successful, there shall be a 3rd telephone launched afterward, Yakovenko hinted. Web3 cellphones are usually not a punchline, in different phrases, however a possible progress class.
However Solana Cellular’s highway to progress wasn’t a straightforward one. Its first Saga handset didn’t see a lot demand when it launched mid-2023 at $1,000. It quickly lowered the worth to $599 in mild of weak demand.
Saga’s fortunes improved after crypto customers observed the dog-centric memecoin BONK’s decentralized app (dApp) supplied Saga house owners with 30 million of its tokens without spending a dime, which was valued across the similar worth because the telephone on the time. The Saga then bought out rapidly.
“I think crypto was going through a hard bear market, and the Solana ecosystem was feeling the worst of it,” Yakovenko stated. “We were looking for more devs to go to launch and I would say [we were] kind of in survival mode because during that chasm of despair you just need to survive until something like macro [turns the market] around.”
