In this special episode, we invited CEO and Co-Founder Chris, Community Manager Ryan, CTO Jonas, and System Architect Le from Mirror World team, talking about crypto's mobile from three different perspectives.
Please view the original video here:
Section 1: Mobile Dapp Users—Pain Spots
From a user's perspective, the first topic we discussed is Solana mobile, which is quite a trend nowadays. In talking about common issues on Solana mobile, we shared what role mobile dApps' safety plays in terms of customer acquisition.
Ryan:
For me, Mobile end Web3 dApps need to be easy to use and have good accessibility. For example, you don't want an app that only allows you to trade three or four different tokens. Instead, you want it to have a wider array, which explains why multi-chain dApps are likely to be the future.
Another thing users want is a fast transaction. If you're trading from A currency to B currency, you want it to be almost instant, as the blockchain changes so much and the value of the tokens goes down constantly. As a result, you must be quick at taking that particular snapshot and creating your block. Users want transactions that work as a smooth network and have no stop congestion, rather than letting them fail.
Mobile and Customer Acquisition
Ryan:
The thing that really puts me off using the mobile market is that transactions occasionally fail. If I'm trying to buy an FTP or mint an NFT on, let's say, Magic Eden using Phantom, the process itself is quite strenuous, taking a while or a few attempts to go through.
The problem, therefore, has less to do with the market, but more with mobile devices, as the application you're using is not built for that particular process —— it is built for quick browsing.
We just saw the Solana saga, the new Solana phone. One of the leading brands they have is safety because it is well-adapted to Web 3 overall blockchain functionalities. Since safety is one of its main functions to be taken care of, mobile has a lot of potential for the market. Chris, what do you think? If we have the overall safety on Solana mobile improved, what is its overall scalability? What's its potential?
Chris:
From a user's perspective, I believe mobiles have historically been a lot safer than PCs, just because all of the security mechanisms can be instilled directly within, for example, apple chips. That is why Solana, aside from the Saga phone itself, also has a seed fault program within their Solana mobile stack SDK that they're providing, which essentially calls for the security measures of native devices like IOS.
I believe Saga is one step ahead of that in thinking of what are some frameworks that developers can use, making sure that none of the private keys leaks out and the execution environment is safe. As there is no sense of exploitation anywhere within the user experience, having a native device will surely make many more users feel secure and safe. However, at the end of the day, it still depends on the ecosystem and applications built on top of the hardware. In that regard, Solana Saga will definitely be attractive and appealing for those hardcore users.
Section 2: Deep Dive—Developers' Encounters with Mobile Dapp
The first question we discussed with developers is: what are some main differences between Solana Mobile and PC in your overall developing process？
Jonas:
I think mobile development is initially and natively different from building for PC and the web. Previously, you had to write in native and specific languages, but till now, we have solutions that allow us to write in a cross-platform way.
Once you write solutions for cross-platform applications and frameworks, you can deploy them to many contexts. The process has become more accessible in terms of mobile and particularly for building on the blockchain. I wouldn't say desktops had a lot of challenges, but they had a very specific subset of tools, and these tools were as strong as the tools built for the web by native desktops.
I believe the number of developers built on the native desktop is not as many as those built for the web. Whereas on the web end, there are a lot of tools and frameworks offering faster support to back-end and front-end applications
In the native context, it takes a lot of work. You have to work very closely with the teams to write these frameworks, such as Ethereum, JS for Web3, and JS for Solana, as it is important to work very closely with the teams, understand how to perform the RPC protocols, and how to package the transactions and send them.
Differences between Solana Mobile and PC for Developer
Le:
I have a straightforward example demonstrating why the mobile experience differs from the desktop experience. Many decentralized or Web 3 apps start with desktop browsers; whenever you want to transfer tokens to someone else or assign a transaction, a pop-up window will show up, directing the user to create, authorize, and approve the transaction to the chain.
That works for the desktop, but when it comes to the mobile side, where users want to start a transaction within the game, jumping to a different third-party mobile wallet app and then switching back could be an unpleasant experience.
That is one incentive why we want to focus our resources on the mobile end.
Section 3: Sum Up—Experience Exponential Growth with the Best Mobile Dapp Experience
Given that Solana just launched their Saga and mobile is kind of the talk of the town right now, why is it important for users to go mobile and Web 3?
Ryan:
That is an excellent question. The main reason is that it makes mass adoption easier. At the moment, not everyone owns a PC, but probably 50%, maybe more of the world is actually on mobile.
It is easily accessible data, allowing everyone to access technology from anywhere in the world you've been building and creating. Since you have to use particular applications that you have to access from a PC, such as Megaplex, candy machine, or bubble gum, to build, the fact that you can do this from your mobile now is a game changer.
We will probably see a lot more Defi project projects out there with different VCs investing in that. And yes, it is fascinating.
Today, Blockchain and Web 3 are developing rapidy and there are new chains and products releasing everyday. While knowing that more people are going to notice and develop mobile devices after the release of Saga, we also asked Chris what are some current market niches for mobile SDK. Similar to the situation in which the new Apple Store was released earlier, what are some current market niches for mobile dApp SDK?
Chris:
That is an interesting question because when you think about the first original iPhone, there is no App Store tied to the first hardware, which is very different from when Solana released Saga. I'm sure the App Store will be tied together with the product itself.
But that being said, I think a very limited number of applications have been deployed now. Without a lot of users on crypto aside from centralized exchanges, it led products like Coinbase and Binance to gain vast numbers of users in the past couple of years, especially coming from developing countries for Binance and the majority of the U.S. market for Coinbase.
As these centralized exchanges brought a wave of users, we believe games will be another explosive niche after the development schedule of these games near completion, where it takes about one to two years for a smaller scale game and maybe three to four for a larger one. There will surely be users coming into the space simply because they are fans of those entertainment products.
However, at the same time, there is a longer time schedule. Something like StepN is brilliant in that it dives into the nature of human behavior and incentives of speaking financial rewards, making the interaction with the product much easier. Such logic always applies to future developments, whether it be Play-to-Earn or Move-to-Earn products. There will also be waves of users crowd into the product itself. I'm not suggesting that there would be sustainability in the long run. Whereas as an acquisition strategy, it has merits to it. And once they're in the ecosystem, there is probably a higher possibility that they will try out different applications.
We consider some social, notification, and gaming apps that will bring more users into the space, but it is hard to tell at this point. From our perspective of Mirror World, we genuinely want to be product agnostic, where a mobile stack is just a mobile stack, solving the problems for any mobile developer that wants to join this space. If you want to make the payment, it is the same across games, social, or marketplaces. Ideally, it can offer the best experience as a mobile product rather than just a vertical edge.
If you are interested in Mirror World SDK, please check the following links:
Website: https://mirrorworld.fun/developer
Blog: https://blog.mirrorworld.fun/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mirror_matrix
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9NkOWpL_b2kotDBmtE98dw