Getting closer: The mobile era of web3 with Saga and Solana Mobile Stack

Exactly one year ago at the first Breakpoint, Anatoly Yakovenko had an idea for jumpstarting the mobile era for crypto. Eight months later, Solana Mobile announced Saga, a flagship, crypto-first Android phone, and the Solana Mobile Stack, or SMS, a collection of technologies aimed at unlocking the Web3 ecosystem broadly on mobile devices.

And today, back at Breakpoint, we’re updating the world on our progress.

Our phones have become the primary way that most of us experience the digital world, for everything but our web3 activities. Saga and SMS will change that.

Saga is our vision of what a crypto-first device should be. It’s got flagship specs - Snapdragon® 8+ Gen 1, 12GB of RAM, 512GM of Flash, 6.67” OLED display, all wrapped up in beautiful industrial design and tightly integrated with SMS. We’re excited to be working with OSOM Privacy to build this device, which will launch early in 2023 for $1000. Reserve your spot in line now for $100 at https://store.solanamobile.com/.

The big update with Saga is that DVT-1 dev kits have been manufactured and boxed up, with the release software undergoing final testing right now — they’ll start shipping in mid-December. These are pre-production Saga phones for builders in the ecosystem who want to ready dApps for the Solana dApp Store and to test Seed Vault.

Shipping will be prioritized for holders of Saga Pass, a membership NFT for early adopters of Saga. The first Saga Pass mint is complete, but another mint will be coming soon -  head to solanamobile.com to find out more.

For SMS, we issued several updates:

Mobile Wallet Adapter is an open protocol for connecting dApps and wallets on mobile devices. Mobile Wallet Adapter is for any Android device, not just Saga – and it’s ready now. There are two wallets available today that support the Mobile Wallet Adapter protocol – Phantom and Solflare – with more wallets in the process of their own integrations. If you are a developer with an existing dApp, now is the time to upgrade with mobile support. You can find a guide to upgrading here.

While the current Mobile Wallet Adapter support is Android focused, we’ve heard loud and clear the ecosystem asking for iOS support. The Solana Foundation has provided a grant to FastAF to develop Mobile Wallet Adapter protocol support for iOS.

The Solana dApp Store is a web3-focused delivery channel for dApps that is free of fees, and with policies friendly to the crypto space. Solana Mobile will start accepting Solana dApp Store submissions in January, 2023, and the dApp Store will launch with Saga.

We’ve also been working on the policies for dApp Store submissions, but this is an area where we’re moving slowly on purpose. Users of the Solana dApp Store deserve the same protections against spam, unwanted software, malicious apps, illegal content, and similar, as users of any other app store. We’ll be publishing specifics of our policies in advance of accepting submissions to the Solana dApp store.

In a special acknowledgement, we want to recognize the projects already building with SMS and Saga, including Audius, Dialect, FTX, Hyperspace, Jupiter and Phantom, among more than two dozen others. You, too, can be a part of this paradigm shift (solanamobile.com, of course, is the place to find out more).

A couple of projects in particular stepped forward today to announce something unique for Saga and SMS:

• Helium Mobile announced today that Saga phones sold in the U.S. will get a 30-day free subscription to Helium Mobile allowing them to seamlessly connect to the Helium 5G network and partner 5G networks nationwide. Helium Mobile is the first ever cryptocarrier that uses an innovative mobile carrier model that leverages people-built coverage and cryptoeconomics to reduce costs and increase benefits for subscribers.
• And Ledger will be updating Ledger Live to support SMS. When their app is updated, users will be able to easily move funds between Seed Vault wallets and Ledger Nano hardware wallets, giving users the opportunity to safely and securely hold and use funds wherever it makes sense for them.

Oh, and we are still working through the grant applications for SMS. If you’ve applied, well done and thank you for your patience. For those of you that haven’t applied for a grant yet, get on it! We still have earmarked funds available to support the next great web3 mobile tools and apps.

Snapdragon is a trademark or registered trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated. Snapdragon is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.