Author: Jack Kubinec, Blockworks; Translator: Baishui, Golden Finance
If Solana investors take their eyes off their AI tokens, they will see some interesting products scheduled to launch this year.
Of course, shipping dates are always subject to delays, but as of now, 2025 is expected to see a range of Solana product launches. Solana Mobile’s Seeker phone tops the list along with Jump Crypto’s Firedancer client full version. DePIN, crypto wearable technology, and Jito’s re-staking platform are also areas to watch, with new products expected.
The author of this newsletter believes that the most noteworthy product launch will be the Solana Seeker, the second phone created by Solana Mobile. The new phone is expected to launch in mid-2025.
Solana Mobile is being developed by Solana Labs, the original Solana development company where co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal still work. Perhaps on the strength of its credibility, Seeker has attracted dozens of Solana teams to its so-called dApp store.
Seeker orders have come in part from interest in an airdrop of tokens tied to the phone, which proved to be quite lucrative for the last Solana phone. When we last spoke in October, Solana Mobile general manager Emmett Hollyer said the Seeker, which currently costs $500, had received 145,000 pre-orders.
Following the Seeker hype will likely be the full launch of Firedancer, a Solana validator client built from the ground up by Jump Crypto. Firedancer is the software that Solana network validators can run to process transactions and build the blockchain — and Solana’s die-hard fans have been raving about it since development began in 2022.
Firedancer was revealed to be live at the Solana Breakpoint conference in September 2024, but is currently only running in non-voting mode, meaning the client still essentially comes with training wheels. No one really knows if or when Firedancer may be fully live, and the team hasn’t done much to hype it up. The client’s GitHub repository shows two code commits related to voting transactions in the past month.
While interest in DePINs has waned slightly among crypto chatterboxes, I’ve been keeping an eye on the launch of a Solana DePIN this year. DAWN, the darling of the crypto space that aims to be a decentralized internet service provider, is slated to launch on mainnet in 2025.
Speaking of industries that have seen declining interest amid the explosion in artificial intelligence, Jito’s restaking platform should launch in about a month, a team member told me today.
There’s one more wild card to keep an eye on: fitness tech. The Pulse, a fitness-tracking wristband that connects to Solana, is scheduled to ship in the first quarter. Cudis's second generation of its Solana smart ring just started shipping in December (I should note that my first Cudis ring rusted, though my second has been fine so far. Buyer beware, though).