Exclusive: Emmett Hollyer Breaks Down Latest Solana Seeker Announcements

Solana Accelerate unleashed a wealth of announcements across the ecosystem, but none hit quite so hard as the confirmation of the Solana Seeker’s shipping date, August 4th.

With purchasers already itching to get their hands on the new hardware, Solana Mobile dropped an even bigger announcement. Solana Seeker will be supported by a decentralized, incentive-driven economy, powered by its native token, $SKR.

Eager to learn more about the $SKR economy and the team’s ambitions for the TEEPIN architecture, SolanaFloor sat down with Solana Mobile General Manager Emmett Hollyer.

The $SKR Economy

Solana Mobile’s $SKR token reinforces some of crypto’s most fundamental ethos. While the existing mobile duopoly bolsters Big Tech and caters to centralized whims, Solana dreams of a more equitable economy that fairly rewards builders and gives users influence and control over the kind of mobile experience they want to participate in.

“Right now in the existing ecosystems, as you continue to use and engage and spend, that's all going out. None of it ever comes back to you… It's as much about ownership and loyalty and creating a connection to the ecosystem as it is anything else.”

The $SKR token is the centerpiece of a progressive economy, balancing developer incentives and user demand to create a sustainable flywheel of value creation. 

Given typical incentive models within the crypto industry, one can imagine that applications with high levels of activity and authentic, positive ratings in the Solana dApp Store will be eligible to receive $SKR rewards. Meanwhile, token holders and Seeker Guardians will govern the policies and business models that shape the Solana Mobile economy.

“If there are policies about what apps can and can't be in the store and business models that can and can't be supported, Guardians will control the contracts that say, this is allowed, this is not allowed, and work with dApp developers to get their apps distributed to as many friends as possible.”

While the specifics surrounding the exact responsibilities and eligibility criteria for Seeker Guardians are still unreleased, Hollyer is adamant that Guardians must be aligned with Solana Mobile’s vision long term.

“What's most important is that we find people who are really passionate about the long-term success of this ecosystem. Just like any other new network that launches, you have to find the people who are both early adopters and very committed to the long term. We don't want the future network effects to be driven by short-term thinking.”

In addition to the $SKR token, Solana Mobile unveiled another scarce, unique asset class to the economy: .skr addresses. While .sol addresses serve as a fun and simplistic way of naming accounts, .skr addresses are inherently sybil-resistant. 

Similar to how all Solana Mobile devices come complete with a Soulbound Genesis Token, .skr addresses are a way of validating unique users and potentially showcasing specific activity profiles. By tracking activity from .skr addresses, developers can separate authentic activity from artificially generated sybil spamming and filter for more precise user behavior.

“With a device, with a phone, we have the opportunity to say, hey, this is one of one. This is unique. Your identity not only serves as a social theme, but also it proves to developers that you're unique, that you're high value, and that you are worthy of testing their latest features, having access to different types of rewards programs.”

What to Expect from Seeker dApps

Beyond a novel economy, one of Solana Mobile’s key differentiators from legacy devices is the Solana dApp Store. Leveraging the Seeker’s secure seed vault and decentralized incentive model, the Solana dApp store could play host to a wealth of new-age applications and business models.

Drawing parallels to the emergence of mobile-first superapps, Hollyer remarked that even Apple and Google couldn’t have predicted how the mobile economy and experience would proliferate.

“I don't think anybody at Apple was saying, yeah, this is going to open the door for digital taxi services… The business models that shook out of it were totally new. And I think we're in a similar place.”

When asked what kind of applications he wanted to see developers create, Hollyer stressed the importance of providing meaningful solutions to common problems. The Solana Mobile General Manager discouraged transforming existing webapps into smaller, mobile-friendly versions, instead challenging builders to “take a fresh approach to what it means to do that on the go.”

“What I want to see builders do is take a big step back and say, generally what problems are we solving for our users? And if we reframe their context to say, what does somebody on the go actually want us to solve for? And how can we solve that as quickly and as seamlessly as possible? That's where I think builders need to go towards.”

The Solana dApp Store landscape will largely evolve alongside the prevailing culture of the $SKR economy and the flexibility that comes from being free of the constraints of a centralized app store. The recent Epic Games x Apple saga has only exacerbated and exemplified the abuse of control typical within the duopoly.

While Apple has theoretically abolished its 30% tax on purchases, Hollyer affirms these “rulings really only impact outside-of-app purchases”, meaning lower conversions for builders and a diminished user experience.

“You should be able to offer a super seamless, super native, great experience that is secure, while also having more control over the economics of your business. So at the end of the day, we don't think developers should have to make a choice between the two, and we don't think users should be stuck on the receiving end of either a less seamless experience or developers who can offer them less innovative business models.”

Solana Mobile’s decentralized economy circumvents the inhibiting restrictions inflicted by the duopoly. With $SKR holders guiding the policies and contracts that govern the economy, the Solana dApp Store should remain an open and collaborative platform free from the influence of singular entities.

“As we decentralize, everybody who participates will have an opportunity to modify what the policies are, as opposed to just waiting for one person, one company to establish their policies… Nikita Bier was saying earlier that the most existential threats of builders are the centralized app stores, and we believe in that more than anybody.”

Decentralizing Hardware

One of the biggest unlocks of the Solana Mobile economy is not a sustainable flywheel for developers and users, but a decentralized system that can be implemented into a wider range of devices. 

In a perfect world, Seeker is not the only device leveraging the Solana Mobile experience. Hollyer encourages third-party OEMs to incorporate the Solana Mobile’s TEEPIN into their devices, expanding the world’s first decentralized mobile-first economy to a significantly wider user base.

Solana Mobile’s TEEPIN gives Web2 device manufacturers a turnkey solution to integrate a Web3 decentralized economy, alongside exposure to crypto-native users. With crypto regulations across the world steadily becoming more progressive, OEMs are likely to start actively considering how they can implement Web3-native tooling into their hardware.

“I think our architecture, TEEPIN, it can sound complicated. It's got a lot of really nuanced and really technical components to bring it all together. But our objective as a team is to make the integration as simple as possible. We want it to be a matter of desire, not competency, for these OEMs to bring this to their customers.”

With competitors releasing new devices every year, one could argue that Seeker hardware might struggle to keep up with the likes of Apple and Samsung. When asked how Solana Mobile would stay abreast of technological improvements, Hollyer argued that Seeker’s value proposition goes beyond hardware specifications.

“I'm not super concerned about being stuck in the hardware rat race because I think the ecosystem will naturally differentiate between different types of products and different types of experiences because there's going to be multiple hardware builders to work with.”

If OEMs adopt the TEEPIN architecture, consumers might see new Solana Mobile-enabled devices hit the shelves with the same frequency that we’ve come to expect from Web2 manufacturers. For the time being, Solana Mobile’s attention remains laser-focused on optimizing the Seeker.

“Right now we are 100% focused on Seeker. We want to make sure it's the best possible experience for everybody who gets it… We don't want to leave any customers behind. And the other thing is we're not dependent on our hardware being the future of everything we do.”

Looking Ahead

With the Seeker shipping date finally given and the endless cries of “wen seeker” answered, Hollyer and Solana Mobile now turn their attention to cultivating an economy of abundance for both developers and users.

Solana Mobile will host a range of hackathons and grants to kickstart innovation within the $SKR economy. Lauding the Solana community’s profound attraction to PMF, Hollyer is optimistic that Seeker holders will find a wealth of revenue-generating apps that are optimized for mobile users.

“What the Solana ecosystem is doing that is setting it out ahead of all the other outlines is it has found product builders who build actual apps that drive actual revenue.”

Hollyer argues that the Seeker’s success could help Solana extend its lead over rival chains even further. By introducing a unique, mobile-first decentralized economy to Solana’s relentless builder culture, Solana Mobile will elevate the crypto experience and usher in a new vertical of dominance for the industry’s most performant Layer-1 blockchain.

“If we open yet another set of doors for them [developers], that app revenue war that Solana continues to win, the lead only extends. It gives just that much more opportunity for developers and users to come together and transact in a meaningful, sustainable way.”

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