I took a look at some of the cryptophones available back in the summer of last year, to try and learn what or why one would get one of them. After having looked into Saga, Solanas Web 3.0 phone that was just launched back them. But I could not really see that big upside with any of them. What then has changed in a year and a half?
The Solana Saga phone saga gets a happy ending
When the Saga phone was announced in mid-2022 there was some buzz surrounding it. However, it appeared that this buzz did not translate into sales. The $999 pricetag was most likely not helping matters either. And in an interview from December 5th Anatoly Yakovenko, one of the Co.Founders, revealed that the numbers for the phone were not particularly good. This is with only 2.500 sales confirmed on-chain. Something Yakovenko also confirmed. He also talked about how for the project to be a success they would have needed to sell somewhere around 25-50.000 Saga phones. That puts the actual sales to not even 10% of the minimum needed.
Solana Labs, the company making the phone, even dropped the price from its initial $999 to $599 back in August this year. A measure made to try and increase sales. But having to go all Jason Voorhees on your product like that, dropping the price by 40% a mere 4 months after it got to market. That is not the start of any success story I have ever heard. Well until now that is.
What then has changed that made the phone sell out in the US, and more or less in the EU as well. This something needed to have happened somewhere after December 5th, as back then, the phone was more or less considered a failure.
What happened is people. People happened. As will most things if you give it enough time people will start to look at underutilized things, looking to see if there is something there worth exploring. And as it happened, this very much was the case here. When you buy your Saga phone, one of the first things a buyer most likely does is mint the free NFT, the Saga Genesis NFT, that comes with the phone. This is how they were able to confirm the 2.400 sold phones by the way.
Some of the rewards that you could claim that came with the Saga phone
With that, you get some nice things like a $20 welcome pack of $USDC. But $USDC is a stable coin, so that can't be it. Well as it happens new phone users get some other stuff as well. Among them, you were able to get an airdrop in one of the DAPPs available in their DAPP store. In it is an allocation of 30M $BONK. Back then worth around $10. But as you probably have guessed, and noticed, a lot has happened in the crypto market in the last month or so. And that applies to Bonk as well.
As you can see the price has literally gone bonkers. This now means that the 30M $BONKS have rocketed from the measly $10-20 back in early June to a massive $630 in today's price. That means with the new low price don't he Saga phone. This airdrop more than pay for the phone. Thus the Saga phone turned from a failure to a success story overnight.
Raj Gokal, the other co-founder of Solana, has confirmed on twitter that the current Saga phone is limited to 20.000 units. And despite this recent turn of events where the phone looks like it will sell out completely. I highly doubt that we will see a new version of the Saga. Even if the taglines more or less would write themselves. The Saga continues, get the new Saga 2.0 Happy Ending edition, just as an example.
And while the people at Solana Labs most likely are happy they are going to sell out of stock. They more than well realize that people are not buying the phone because they want it. They are buying it because they actually get more money they it costs them. Meaning they are literally earning money by spending it. Until some changes are made in the number of people actively using Solana, or a new popular DAPP plops up there, we are more than likely not going to see a new Solana phone any time soon. But with this Saga getting a happy ending, one should never say never.
I would love to hear what your thoughts are on this, will you now start looking at anything crypto-related to see if there is some free stuff you get that has appreciated over time? Or are you just sad you missed out on getting a new phone for free? Please let me know in the comment section.
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Picture provided by: Fair Use, https://coinmarketcap.com