Ship or Die 2025: Going Viral on the App Store (Anatoly Yakovenko, Nikita Bier, Pedro Miranda)

Good morning. How's everyone doing

today? They're

pumped. Super excited for this talk

today. Uh, as as Eno, our amazing MC

mentioned, my name is Pedro Miranda,

formerly lead the consumer growth team

at the Salana Foundation. We have

Anatoli here, the the co-founder of

Salana, Salana Labs, and now focusing on

Salana mobile. And as Eno mentioned

first time I think publicly Nikita that

you're here representing the Salana

Foundation in an advisory capacity. Uh

Nikita you're one of the most uh in

demand experts on the growth and the

consumer side. So we're extremely

excited to talk about you know how to go

viral uh in this new digital age. But

first we have some some news this week

from Salana mobile. a few things that

you all

announced. When mobile, you guys

actually answered that. So, August 4th

is the shipping date for the new Seeker

Salana mobile phone. Uh, you announced a

net new native asset. Look, it boots up.

That's awesome. In these ecosystem, uh,

you announced a new security

architecture called Tpin. Maybe we'll

get into that what what that actually

is. And my personal favorite uh you also

announced that Slana mobile software

stack is available for other OEMs and

hardware manufacturers. So I guess

totally we we'll tee it off to you. What

does the the new news mean for users and

mobile app builders in the Salana

ecosystem and beyond?

So I don't I don't know if I'm cursed,

but like I I love hardware. I spend most

of my career at Qualcomm. So I was there

during kind of the initial mobile boom

in the in the early as um you know I was

working on these 2 megabyte devices and

I saw the transition from that those

flip phones to iPhone. That was uh

really kind of like you know I think one

of the most exciting times in uh tech

because in my view a phone is almost

like the final form of what a computer

should look like. I don't think in a 100

years this is going to change. I think

we'll still be holding little slabs of

computing devices with a touchcreen that

give us information. Then maybe they'll

be a lot cooler, but like I think it'll

basically still look like this. So, um I

really want to work on these devices and

like build something awesome. And when I

started crypto and got into it,

um, just of how these devices are

manufactured, it was immediately obvious

to me that you have secure element and

secure enclave and all the properties

that you want out of a wallet already

baked into the existing technologies

that people like Qualcomm and uh, Apple

were shipping. We just need the software

to expose it. So this is where that idea

kind of warmed itself into my brain. We

need a cryptophone. Um that was 2017

2018 and years later when a a Salana

finally got big enough to where we have

folks like Pedro doing all the work. Uh

I have the time to go work on this. Um

that's where Seeker came from. It's

where Saga came from. Um, and what's

cool, we can basically have um hardware

level like cold storage security and a

device um that you use as a hot wallet,

you know, your daily driver, your daily

signing device with the UX of Apple Pay.

Um, so we can give developers this uh

really really nice conversion flow that

you get on Apple and normal mobile

devices, but it's it's crypto. And I

think this is one of the biggest UX

challenges in crypto to onboarding

people is how do you get them to spend

money and if they have to go switch to a

wallet load like a wallet specific um

you know web app and all this stuff like

I'm sure Nikita can tell you the

conversion rates are just dropping like

every one of these like little UX

friction points you lose 10 20% of your

customers. So until the UX is as good as

Apple Pay, there's no way we can

actually get uh crypto fully adopted. Um

and crypto is all about removing

intermediaries. How do we remove the

people in the middle and replace them

with math? Um so tin is that if you

think about it, that little piece of

hardware also determines what in the

entire operating system that boots up on

your iPhone. Um, because of that little

piece of hardware and the math that

signs the certificate for the operating

system, this is how Apple can actually

enforce 30% fees in their app store. Um,

this is why Epic can't sideloadad an app

on the on the iPhone. They can't bypass

that store and the rules that they want

to enforce. And this is all because of

the keys that Apple, the corporation,

controls. But those keys are just math.

We can put that math on a blockchain and

we can create a a full loop that's

cryptographically secured between the

user that you know holds the seeker

token and the wishes that they want to

express and the rules in the app store

without any intermediaries. You don't

have to rely on any people to actually

enforce those. It can all be done with

math. That's the exciting part. It's

kind of a a classic protocol uh RP

Goldberg machine, but it is purely just

math and a bit of silicon. So, a lot of

mentions in terms of the UI UX

challenges and whatnot. Nikita, I'm

curious. How does this sound to you as

someone focused on virality and product

growth? Well, as a developer, uh if

you're a mobile developer, your biggest

existential risk is the app store. um

which is and it's particularly acute for

uh crypto companies because they get the

bulk of the rejections. Um any developer

who gets that email from Apple that says

your app's been rejected uh it's kind of

like uh your heart skips a beat. You're

like is this the end of my company? Um

but uh so I think on the developer side

th this is uh a huge opportunity. Um I

think uh the other side is uh the

ability to do microtransactions

passively potentially. Uh as we've all

seen all social networks are now flooded

with spam. Uh so the ability to charge

for posts in a small way to prevent spam

bots flooding uh your ex replies with

LLM generated responses. I think those

types of UXs will uh be really uh

conducive to the next 10 years. Um the

hop from your app to Phantom is like

probably the biggest cognitive load

ever. Like what am I what is what is

signing this certificate approving this

transaction? um if that can be

seamlessly happening inside of the uh

these mobile experiences uh I think

that's going to have better conversion

rates but also unlock whole new business

models I guess you know I've been

wondering as you all have have been

speaking what makes this the right time

to bet on this type of product

experience like why now is it the

regulatory environment is it that the

product embedded wallet infra

infrastructure has gotten better. Uh I'm

curious about your answer to to why now

Nikita.

I think uh there's going to be

challenges certainly because the reason

people come to the app store is the

distribution. uh but I think uh uh

crypto Salana has uh expanded its reach

uh with memecoins and there's more

people more people have wallets now

because of uh trading with moonshot and

uh so I I think there's an opportunity

to uh where where users want this um and

if all social networks are going to be

flooded with spam and this is one of the

vehicles to stop it Uh I think there

will be uh uh some there'll be

experiences that might not even be

possible on uh iOS or uh or Android.

Totally. I'm curious your thoughts. You

mentioned this journey from 2017 onwards

and your love of hardware, but what's

your answer to why now in terms of

making this investment and this bet? Um

I honestly don't think founders think

about like timing. they just get the bug

and then they try to build stuff. So

there wasn't like a is this the right