tldr; notes on the Solana Mobile Stack & Saga announcement
A compilation of noteworthy moments from NYC.
These are notes from the video below. This includes Solana Mobile Stack, Saga mobile phone, SBF<>Anatoly fireside chat, Magic Eden, Phantom, and Q&A.
Solana Mobile Stack (SMS)
Goal: “Bring world-class Solana applications to mobile devices”.
Seed Vault — Key custody solution.
Stores private keys and seeds in a secure hardware and execution environment.
Basically, makes it easy to sign transactions with the phone.
Mobile Wallet Adapter — transaction signing for dApps to Android.
Open-source specification for signing transactions.
For native apps, web-based apps, and remote (e.g. if running an app on a desktop).
Demo: a Magic Eden transaction pops up within the app and the approval with fingerprint signing.
Solana dApp store — App Store but without fees.
Find Solana dApps and wallets.
Solana ecosystem “participates in the moderation of the store”.
Solana Pay for Android — e.g. tap-to-pay.
Saga (Android Phone running SMS)
Development efforts led by Jason Keats, “the architect of the iPad Pro”.
From a quick Googling, the team has been building a privacy-focused phone which has now pivoted to the Solana-based one.
The announcement was pretty short and didn’t have much philosophy on the “why”.
Fireside chat with SBF and Anatoly
SBF (Regulation):
Spending much time in DC working on the regulatory side.
Optimistic that in 6 months from no regulatory frameworks to fairly reasonable ones (institutional and consumer comfort).
SBF (Future of FTX):
Equitable access to exchange data for everyone, not just HFT firms.
Comprehensive financial experience (tokenized stocks, prediction markets).
FinTech is missing an everything platform (crypto, stocks, P2P payments) — all available on blockchain rails which is a long-term goal they are 2/3rds through on.
The next goal is trying to launch a tier 1 crypto experience in the US.
SBF (on crypto mobile):
Everything is going to mobile, though the US is lagging behind (e.g. banking or exchanges).
Trading on Uniswap on mobile is a mess. A phone should be able to natively access dApps.
“Nothing is more P2P than my hardware to your hardware.” I don’t use crypto for purchases — crypto beats traditional rails for wire transfer but not for donuts.
FTX application can be used as a payment processor.
Magic Eden
50% of traffic comes from mobile browsers — users convert 30% more often than on desktop.
Mobile lacks core functionalities like trading and minting — this is because the App Store restricts digital asset purchases.
Demo: mobile notification that a mint is happening → user participates.
Phantom
Launched a mobile application 5 months ago — 35% of active users on mobile.
The Android app will be upgraded to support the new transaction signing features.
Q&A
$10m fund dedicated to mobile developers.
Difference to Sirin/Samsung Wallet: number of developers entering the space and understanding the crypto UX.
Scaling the network: more cores.
Custody: want people to trust this like a hardware wallet. Will explore other seed phrase recovery besides the norm (e.g. social).
iOS: Solana succeeds and Apple changes.
Growth: builders are better than before and growth metrics are going up (especially on NFTs) despite the market downturn.
Gaming: “obviously tied to the future of crypto”.
Cross-chain compatibility: “put a pull request”.
What’s on Saga vs. all Android: Seed Vault is 1st on Saga, but the Mobile Wallet Adapter is free and available outside of Saga.