In Singapore's bustling tech district, where traditional shophouses sit amongst gleaming skyscrapers at the heart of Asia’s financial markets, Solana Labs co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal sat down over a bowl of noodles to discuss the Solana Mobile journey on a recent episode of Midcurve shot during Breakpoint 2024.
With 150,000+ Solana Seeker devices soon to be in circulation, Solana Mobile is orchestrating crypto's most ambitious experiment in consumer hardware to date, and testing a thesis that has eluded crypto pioneers for years: can blockchain technology finally break through to mainstream mobile users?
With the entire Solana ecosystem anxiously awaiting the Seeker device, the answer appears to be resoundingly positive, but that was not the case when the original Solana Saga was released back in 2023. "It was an experiment to even get to 20,000 devices," Toly reflects on the early days of Solana Mobile and the Solana Saga’s unlikely success. "It was a slog like every startup — it feels like it's going to fail until it doesn't."
Years earlier, Solana emerged as a response to what its founders saw as fundamental limitations in existing blockchain infrastructure. Raj Gokal, Solana Labs co-founder and self-described “Solana janitor” explains: "When Solana started, the biggest problem in crypto was that Ethereum didn't scale…Solana's goal was and always will be to bring the cost and latency of a blockchain network down as close to zero as possible.”
This pursuit of performance has become the core mantra of the Solana network and its entire developer community, which notably achieved its first major stress test not through financial applications, but through an unexpected source – NFTs. "The first time 250,000 users all came onto the network at the same time and we knew we had product market fit was Degen Ape Academy's NFT release," Raj recalls. "It was just so clear that the performance mattered, but it was for something we couldn't have predicted it would matter for."
This lesson in unpredictability has informed Solana Labs' current mobile strategy. Solana Mobile’s second generation device, Solana Seeker, “represents improvements in every dimension,” Toly explains. “It's lighter, more affordable, and its features are more integrated with crypto infrastructure. The goal is to get the device in as many hands as possible, while removing as much friction as possible from the crypto mobile experience.”
And while updates to Solana Seeker — from the all-new Seed Vault Wallet to the updated Solana Mobile dApp store — mean that the device is readily equipped for the needs of web3 mobile users, the real challenge isn't just hardware – it's about community.
“Mobile is all about consumers,” Toly acknowledges. “When you look at Solana's community and social layer, it's strong and it’s unified. It’s not fragmented across different ecosystems. Add things like ZK, which makes working with tokens much cheaper, plus all the built-in token programs, I think SocialFi is going to be the next breakout thing."
The mobile initiative represents more than just a new hardware platform; it's an attempt to create what might be crypto's first true consumer ecosystem. Without exorbitant fees for developers in the Solana Mobile dApp store and improved hardware integration throughout the Seeker device, Solana Mobile is betting that the combination of performance and accessibility will finally bridge the gap between crypto enthusiasts and everyday usersBut — much like the Solana network has done.
How we get there is up to Solana’s global community of users. "We haven't seen even the beginnings of what the next really big, really intense product market fit for the network is going to look like," Raj muses. This openness to possibility, coupled with a focus on fundamental performance improvements is a perspective that’s become part of the Solana DNA. It’s a long-term vision that extends beyond current crypto trends and towards an infrastructure that’s ready to meet the needs of whatever comes next.
With 150,000 devices soon to be in users' hands and a growing ecosystem of crypto-native developers already building, Solana Mobile is positioned to become the breakthrough platform that finally brings crypto into the mobile mainstream. As Toly notes, "You have to build the apps that people want.” Solana Mobile’s developer-forward strategy, unified ecosystem, consumer-friendly hardware appear to have created the perfect foundation for exactly that.
Learn more at Solanamobile.com