Solana Announces Saga Mobile Launch Date, But Network Activity Declines

On April 13, Solana said that its flagship, security-conscious, crypto-first Android device from Solana Mobile is available to those who pre-ordered.

The firm will begin taking new orde1111rs for the device on May 8, it added. The Saga crypto smartphone was originally announced in mid-2022.

It stated that the team has been using Saga for months now, along with “hundreds of developers.”

Saga will be able to manage and store crypto assets, mint NFTs, and run decentralized applications from the Solana dApp store.

Furthermore, the hardware specifications are also pretty impressive. Saga will come with a Snapdragon 8+ mobile platform, 12GB of memory, 512GM of storage, and a 6.67” OLED display. It will be priced at around $1,000, according to the announcement.

Saga was designed to compete with any flagship smartphone in the market.

We are proud to bring Web3 right to your fingertips with premium hardware from @OsomPrivacy, powered by the latest Android OS.

Take a look at our spec sheet 🧵 pic.twitter.com/UyKhLSGESn

— Solana Mobile 🌱1️⃣3️⃣ (@solanamobile) April 13, 2023

Solana Usage Slides

The device is now available to ship in the U.S., EU, U.K., Canada, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand. As part of the launch, Saga users will be able to claim a “Saga genesis token NFT” upon setting up their device, it added.

The move comes at a time when Solana’s usage and momentum are waning. The ecosystem has yet to recover from the fallout of the FTX collapse since Sam Bankman-Fried bankrolled the blockchain.

SBF is currently under house arrest, and FTX is going through a messy restructuring period.

Solana’s active wallets have declined by 60% over the past three months, according to the Solscan analytics platform. Additionally, they have been in a downtrend for six months before the demise of FTX.

Moreover, Solana DeFi is still about half of what it was before the FTX collapse. The total value locked is currently around $539 million, according to DeFiLlama. This equates to a market share of less than 1%, so it is far from “killing Ethereum,” which maintains a dominant 60% DeFi market share.

Furthermore, those disruptive network outages are still plaguing the ecosystem.

SOL Price Outlook

SOL prices have gained around 4% on the day in a climb to $25, according to CoinGecko. The token has now made an impressive 20% over the past week.

Nevertheless, it has still not recovered to the price levels it was trading at before the FTX, whereas the overall crypto market is now higher.

SOL remains over 90% down from its peak price of $260 in November 2021.