Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko says the tech firm’s new mobile phone aims to bring droves of new users to the crypto world.
In a new interview on the Bankless YouTube channel, Yakovenko says that Saga, Solana Labs’ new Android-based Web 3.0-enabled smartphone, aims to make transacting with and managing digital assets “as amazing as using Apple Pay.”
“The goal for this product is to build an awesome experience for signing for self custody for those integrations between native applications and digital items, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and all that stuff you want to do with Web 3.0, just make it as amazing as using Apple Pay.
Every time I use Apple Pay, I don’t [have] to enter another credit card ever again. I’m like ‘this doesn’t suck,’ [and] I want the same experience for crypto.”
Yakovenko says that most people in Europe use Android smartphones as their primary computers and that tapping into that market using Saga could bring nearly a billion more users to the crypto sphere.
“Innovation is what I hope will bring product market [fit] to those billion users, you need devs to throw darts at the ball, at the target right, now they’ve all been doing this on desktop mobile…
Outside of the US, in Europe, most people just have a phone as their primary computer, actually most of them an Android phone.”
Solana Labs first unveiled the smartphone in late June, anticipating the new device to cost $1000.
