Solana mobile app launch season is upon us

Cube CEO Bartosz Lipinski agreed in a text that having a mobile app is likely to become table stakes for Solana projects

article-image

sdx15/Shutterstock modified Blockworks

share


This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


A month ago, Solana Mobile announced that the Solana Seeker would ship in mid-2025. This will mark the second iteration of the Solana phone experiment. Partly driven by speculation that the phone will come with lucrative token airdrops, Seeker has seen good early returns. The phone has garnered 145,000 pre-orders, Solana Mobile general manager Emmett Hollyer confirmed to me.

What has slipped a bit below the radar is how Solana’s broader app ecosystem is also quietly shifting into mobile. The Solana DeFi giant Jupiter just debuted its mobile swap platform, and Solana-native apps DRiP, Birdeye, and Cube Exchange also have mobile versions in the works. 

As crypto attempts to enter a long-awaited era of usable apps, it seems like Solana is having a definitive moment where just about everyone is trying to build a mobile app, or at least thinking about it.

Bartosz Lipinski, the CEO of Cube, agreed in a text that having a mobile app is likely to become table stakes for Solana projects. If blockchain technology is going to become approachable, it needs to “meet users where they are — on their phones,” Lipinski said.

This is all well and good in theory, but the crypto world has known about the need for mobile adoption for a long time. Right now, Solana is on the cusp of having a bunch of apps be released into the wild. DRiP is expected in December, a spokesperson said. Cube’s Telegram app is expected next week, and its iOS app is coming in November. Birdeye’s app is expected soon.

Once these Solana apps are actually out, the question will become whether they can gain any sort of broad adoption. In at least some cases, builders are thinking that adoption may come from one of crypto’s few mobile success stories to date — Telegram. 

Cube is releasing a version of its app on Telegram because of the ability to avoid app store approval hurdles and Telegram’s native crypto integration and crypto-native user base, Lipinski told me. 

Caitlin Cook, the director of growth at Solana-based mobile app Moonwalk Fitness, said Telegram is good for quick access and more lightweight features, but it also has limitations.

“[If] your product requires deep functionality, a custom brand experience, and more scalability, building a native app for the app store is probs a better strategy,” Cook said in a direct message.

Regardless, Solana mobile app launches are actually here — not just vaguely in the future. The reason behind this seems to at least partly be the continued development of Solana Mobile which, with its grand ambitions and backing from Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, is leading the way in making crypto on mobile less of a talking point and more of a reality. 


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Ethena Labs is leaping from its flagship synthetic dollar, USDe, to a full product suite—USDtb, iUSDe, and the Arbitrum-based Converge Chain—designed to marry crypto-native yields with TradFi-grade compliance. Our analysis shows how expanding into CME, ETF options, and tokenized Treasuries could lift protocol revenue from sub-$500 million in a bear case to several billion dollars if favorable regulation and institutional adoption align.

article-image

Bitcoin is still rising, 11 years after the documentary film The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin

article-image

Arch Labs CEO told Blockworks that the team plans to launch a native token, but declined to give details

article-image

CEO Mike Silagadze tells Blockworks that the US is “open for business” and why its DeFi bank offering is the first of many

article-image

Doing one thing well and leaving everything else out is often what disruptive technologies do best

article-image

Why an analyst is kicking off COIN coverage with “buy” rating