Over 30,000 pre-orders in 48 hours – and no end in sight. Solana this week announced the Saga 2, the successor to its Web3 smartphone launched in May 2022 and now sold out. The hope of many pre-orderers: This cell phone will make them rich. Because the first Saga became a small windfall for many owners. They got an airdrop of the memecoin Bonk (at an all-time high: 730 US dollars) and later an exclusive Saga Monke NFT followed (all-time high: 14 Solana, around 1,465 US dollars). And that at an original price of 600 US dollars.
There is now a Saga DAO, a number of (mostly worthless) airdrops and Saga NFTs have followed suit, and some Solana projects are teasing collaborations. The Saga sold out overnight in late 2023 and was offered unboxed on eBay for over $3,000. There seems to be great hope that the game will repeat itself with Saga 2. Or even exceeded. What speaks for it – and what speaks against it.
Not much is known about Saga 2 so far. No picture, no specs, just a promise: the new cell phone will start the second chapter of the success story, it says Solana Mobile website. Pre-orders will be accepted in three tranches. The Founders Window is currently running and offers Saga 2 for $450. This is followed by the early adopter window and then the supporter window. The price will probably then increase. The sales quantity is limited: one smartphone per person, five per household.
Saga 2 is scheduled to be released in the first half of 2025. Saga 2 launches with support from Solana greats such as Backpack, Mad Lads, Tensor, Phantom, Solflare, Magic Eden and DRiP. These collaborations at least suggest an ecosystem of rewards and incentives for users. So far, they say they have secured 30,000 pre-orders worth almost $14 million in the first 48 hours. Refunds are excluded unless the smartphone is not manufactured.
The unexpected success story of the Saga
Spurned at launch, then highly sought after: The Saga launched in April 2022 with the aim of revolutionizing the Web3 experience. Your own hardware wallet, a dApp store and transactions via fingerprint. Web3 more convenient than ever. That’s the promise. Reality was close. But there was a lack of really convincing use cases, trading aside. The cell phone also struggled with malfunctions. The Saga – more of an experimental and exciting tech demo. And a flop on the market. Barely 3,000 units sold, the original price of $1,000 had to be reduced by almost half. Nobody was interested in it. Until the end of the year the hype about airdrops and memecoins on Solana began. And Saga was in the middle of it all.
The highlight: Each Saga comes with a Soulbound NFT, the so-called Genesis token. Whoever activates it is forever tied to the Solana wallet. And actually, it’s this NFT that represents Saga’s current value – not the phone. Because the Genesis token secures the right to exclusive rewards, such as airdrops. At first there wasn’t much for it.
The hype around Saga really started when users realized in November 2023 that each Genesis token was entitled to an airdrop of 30 million Bonk. The memecoin had risen by thousands of percent in just a few weeks. Converted, the airdrop was worth as much as the purchase price of the Saga, and the despised cell phone sold out almost overnight. It was soon traded unpackaged on Ebay and Co. for over 3,000 US dollars. In addition to the Bonk airdrop, the Saga Monke NFT in particular proved to be lucrative in January 2024. After crashing to $100, it climbed to an all-time high of $1,400.
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The Saga’s journey is uncertain
It is not yet clear where the current saga will go. The hype surrounding airdrops is one thing above all: a marketing tool. And will probably level off over time and as the number of users grows. Bonk and the Saga Monke NFT have already lost half of their all-time high. There were also other airdrops, but they were often only worth a few dollars. Or completely worthless. Unfortunately, some of them are scams.
The central question is therefore: Will it be possible to firmly integrate Saga as a valuable brand and NFT community into the Solana ecosystem in the long term? You can already see signs of this: Saga hodlers were able to use the Helium network, a kind of decentralized Vodafone, free of charge in the USA for a certain period of time. In the future, you could receive special items for popular games or a whitelist spot for highly anticipated NFT purchases. A Saga DAO with its own Discord has been working for a few weeks to deliver more value and quality here.
Another question arises: The ticket to the benefits of the Saga is the Genesis NFT. Does the successor even come with its own Genesis token? Or are you considering a new system? And what would that mean for legacy Sage users? The answer on the website is a bit vague: “The Saga Genesis token is only available for Saga devices. But there has been incredible interest in reaching users through this mechanism. We look forward to building on this experience in Chapter 2.”
Two scenarios for the new saga
Additionally, if Saga 2 really doesn’t come until 2025, it could miss the next bull market. Most analysts expect it to last until 2025 – no longer. Who knows how much the memecoins, NFTs and airdrops will still be worth. Or Solana at all. After the last bull markets, altcoins often suffered corrections of up to 90 percent, and many simply died.
In the best case scenario, Saga 2 launches in the middle of the bull market. And thanks to the continued success of the debut, it has long been integrated into the Solana ecosystem as a permanent brand and community, with many exciting collaborations and perhaps some lucrative airdrops. If you believe in Solana’s long-term vision, you can hardly go wrong with pre-ordering. Even if it doesn’t make you rich, for $450 you’re part of the long experiment for a mobile Web3. And hopefully has a solid crypto phone in his hands.
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