Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Solana Founder Anatoly Yakovenko on the Solana phone and competing with Apple and Google:
"The device that we have today, the phone, is going to be around for as long as humans are around. It is kind of this perfect interface for humanity because we use our fingers for everything. We process information quickly by reading it. So I don't think you're going to really improve it outside of niche things for like surgeons with VR or whatever. Neural link might surprise me, but I think for the vast majority of humanity, we've kind of built the perfect computer and that's the smartphone.
The hard part is Apple and Google are remarkable companies that build these amazing devices that are as good as consumers want. So how do you disrupt them and how do you build your own distribution channel?
The important thing with crypto is that finance actually is a very different segment than the general population. The vast majority of revenue comes from volume, which is you don't really care about the number of people. What you care about is the spendiest group that is trading the most or spending the most payments. So you can target that segment specifically and build better, safer environments and applications.
So we can focus on things like SeedVault, where users have better security than they do out of the application wallets. We can focus on the fees that applications are charged, like the 20%-30% fees that Google and Apple App Store charge. Those don't really work with a lot of financial applications and things like that. And then build a wedge and build this ecosystem and device that will hopefully get a lot of benefit to consumers and developers on Solana.
And that vertical integration of having the phone and the entire app store and full control over all the environment there is really great. This is why Apple and Google are the two biggest companies in the world. So the pie is enormous, the TAM is enormous, but obviously the competition is fierce."
Solana Founder Anatoly Yakovenko on the Solana phone and competing with Apple and Google:
"The device that we have today, the phone, is going to be around for as long as humans are around. It is kind of this perfect interface for humanity because we use our fingers for everything. We process information quickly by reading it. So I don't think you're going to really improve it outside of niche things for like surgeons with VR or whatever. Neural link might surprise me, but I think for the vast majority of humanity, we've kind of built the perfect computer and that's the smartphone.
The hard part is Apple and Google are remarkable companies that build these amazing devices that are as good as consumers want. So how do you disrupt them and how do you build your own distribution channel?
The important thing with crypto is that finance actually is a very different segment than the general population. The vast majority of revenue comes from volume, which is you don't really care about the number of people. What you care about is the spendiest group that is trading the most or spending the most payments. So you can target that segment specifically and build better, safer environments and applications.
So we can focus on things like SeedVault, where users have better security than they do out of the application wallets. We can focus on the fees that applications are charged, like the 20%-30% fees that Google and Apple App Store charge. Those don't really work with a lot of financial applications and things like that. And then build a wedge and build this ecosystem and device that will hopefully get a lot of benefit to consumers and developers on Solana.
And that vertical integration of having the phone and the entire app store and full control over all the environment there is really great. This is why Apple and Google are the two biggest companies in the world. So the pie is enormous, the TAM is enormous, but obviously the competition is fierce."
