Sales of Solana smartphones soar – BONK aiming for airdrop | CoinDesk JAPAN

Solana Mobile’s Saga smartphone, whose sales have been sluggish, is now expected to be sold out. It is certain that the reason is meme coin BONK.

Arbitrage traders appear to be eyeing a 30 million BONK airdrop that will be distributed to all Saga owners. For a smartphone that costs $599 (approximately 83,860 yen, converted at 140 yen to the dollar), this amount of BONK is worth nearly $700 at current exchange rates.

Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana, said on X (formerly Twitter) on the 14th, “Sales for Saga have increased over 10x in the past 48 hours, and we are currently on track to sell out by the new year.” It is,” he posted. The increase is so noticeable that fellow co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko tweeted that the price had to be raised.

Just a week ago, Saga was facing a bleak outlook due to shockingly low sales, but things have turned around thanks to the excitement around Solana’s meme coin BONK, which, like Dogecoin, is dog-themed. Saga is a blockchain-enabled smartphone with special features to safely store crypto assets (virtual currency) on the smartphone’s own hardware.

A rush of airdrop applicants

On the 14th, Saga’s Discord was flooded with newbies declaring that they had just purchased a smartphone and wanted to get an airdrop.

According to a post on the Discord server, the BONK airdrop will be available to those who have downloaded the BONK app from Saga’s crypto-enabled custom app store.

A user claiming to be a Solana Mobile employee said on Discord, “If you physically have a smartphone, you will be able to issue Genesis tokens” through the dApp Store (these tokens will be used to claim BONK Aerop). “I am qualified to do so.”

“The BONK Airdrop is not forever. The promotion will end at some point,” a user named Jax wrote on Discord. It has not been decided yet.”

｜Translation and editing: Rinan Hayashi
｜Image: Danny Nelson/CoinDesk
｜Original text: Sales of Solana Phone Surge as Traders Chase BONK Arbitrage