Last year’s launch of the Solana Saga smartphone was a big bet by Solana Labs that didn’t initially appear to pay off. But a year-end surge in demand around the then-discounted phone, thanks in part to the surging value of token airdrops tied to it, cleared out the remaining stock and prompted questions about what’s next.

Enter “Chapter 2.” Revealed in January, just weeks after the airdrop craze that revitalized the Saga’s fortunes, the next Solana phone is set to launch in mid-2025 as the Solana Seeker after already attracting 140,000 pre-orders.

Solana Mobile, the Labs division behind the hardware, revealed the official branding and a first look at the next Android handset onstage at Token 2049 in Singapore Friday.

And it’s different. The previously announced $450 pre-order cost—less than half that of the Saga—might have already suggested that, but Solana Mobile General Manager Emmett Hollyer told Decrypt that we shouldn’t judge the Seeker by its much lower price point.

“We’ve priced it very aggressively because we want it to be accessible for growth,” he said, “not necessarily because we see this in any way of a step down.

Full hardware specifications haven’t been released yet, but Hollyer said that the Solana Seeker will have a brighter “flagship display” and a longer-lasting battery than the Saga, plus “better cameras”—including a new third sensor packed onto the back.

And in terms of performance, he suggested that it will be a “meaningful step up from Saga,” in part because it’s been so long since the Saga’s specs were set in early 2022. The Seeker hardware is also “lighter and smaller” than the Saga was, in part because they believe that many users plan to use it as a secondary device rather than replacing their primary phone.

That’s a shift in form as well as a pivot in messaging, which Hollyer said was based in part on feedback to Saga and emerging use cases, such running node software and mining tokens for decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs). The Seeker name, he explained, was inspired by the idea of users trying to “find new opportunities,” whether that’s rewards, experiences, or connection.

“People are constantly seeking those things out,” he said, “and so it just came to us very, very quickly.”

He admitted that messaging around the Saga may have been confusing in terms of its crypto focus. But with 140,000 people already plunking down deposits for the Seeker, they’re confident that there’s a growing group of prospective users—and that this phone will be focused on new and entrenched crypto users, rather than the general public.

“I don’t expect this to be a device that we’re just pitching to the masses, like, ‘Hey, use an Android phone and maybe try some of the crypto features,’” Hollyer said. “I’d love to be there, but I think we need to really, really get this right, and really learn from our users before we can start to pull in the masses.”

Solana Phone 2.0

Amid all the changes, however, some elements of the Seeker are very much like the Saga. The crypto integration is again driven by the Seed Vault, a custom custody solution built within a secure environment on the phone. It’s called out visually in the phone’s design this time, as seen in the product shots, in a glossy cutout wrapped around the right side of the frame.

In addition to the Seed Vault itself, Solana Mobile has designed a custom software wallet for the Seeker in collaboration with Solflare, promising what Hollyer described as a “better user experience” compared to the wallets currently available on the Saga.

They’ve also seen substantially more interest from Solana developers and builders in launching mobile decentralized apps (dapps) alongside the Seeker. Just 20,000 units of the Saga were produced, but with Seeker pre-orders already hitting a 7x multiple of that, he said that developers have more incentive to devote time and resources to mobile.

“We have been frankly inundated by ecosystem outreach,” he said.

Lastly, like the Saga, each Seeker phone will ship with a Genesis NFT—a soulbound token forever tied to the owner’s wallet. The Saga pioneered this model, and it quickly proved to be a “rewards magnet” for owners, as Hollyer framed it, thanks to the BONK meme coin airdrop surging in value late last year and other projects rewarding owners as well.

All of those incentives were community-driven, he said, and there’s been a massive wave of interest from Solana builders in tapping into the Seeker audience too. While there will no doubt be rewards, he also expects projects to offer exclusive access and experiences to owners.

“Of course, it will be a rewards magnet,” said Hollyer, “but it also is going to open some one-of-a-kind experience doors that I think will be new to Seeker versus Saga.”

Edited by Guillermo Jimenez

Last week, the government of Brazil banned X, formerly Twitter, cutting off millions of users from the Elon Musk-owned social network. It is one of the more high-profile examples of restrictions placed on platforms, and disputes around the world span a multitude of reasons: free speech (at least in the U.S.), political dissent, copyright, and illegal activity.

While alternate social media platforms like Bluesky saw a surge in new users from Brazil after the ban, some still insistent on using X have turned to virtual private networks (VPNs)—though doing so is also forbidden by the Brazilian government, and violations could come with a hefty daily fine.

Other sophisticated tools for obfuscating your location include the Tor Browser.

Not all VPNs are created equal. Decrypt spoke to the executive director of Unredacted Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides free and open services that help people evade censorship and protect their right to privacy.

What is a VPN?

IP addresses—numbers assigned to every network on the internet—are like a digital fingerprint. They reveal a considerable amount of information, including physical location, what internet provider you use, and so on. They are typically the way access is “geofenced” or restricted to or from specific regions or jurisdictions.

VPNs obscure this information as well as encrypt connections to prevent snooping by third parties.

“For example, if you are in Brazil and X is blocked, you can use a VPN to tunnel packets destined for X inside of a VPN tunnel to another country,” Zach, the executive director of Unredacted Inc., told Decrypt. (He asked that his last name not be used.) “An ISP or government couldn’t inspect what’s inside that tunneled traffic without the encryption keys from your VPN provider or device.”

The problem, Zach said, is that many VPNs don’t try to disguise the fact that they are VPNs.

“Common VPN protocols such as OpenVPN or WireGuard can easily be fingerprinted based on common port numbers or via DPI (deep packet inspection) by a government or ISP,” Zach said. “The use of typical VPN protocols is no secret to your ISP and government, and in some situations, it could endanger the user.”

As Zach explained, it’s also common for VPN providers to get pressured by government entities to share user data in order to investigate criminals and terrorist groups who may be attempting to hide their activities using a VPN.

“People can use VPNs for malicious purposes, as is true with any tool,” Zach said. “Governments will often send subpoenas trying to discover the true origin of VPN traffic and request subscriber details for a specific timestamp where an offense occurred.”

Instead of using a “raw VPN,” Unredacted points people to “obfuscated protocols.”

Zach noted that protocols like Shadowsocks—which is used by Outline VPN—and Tor transports like webtunnel, snowflake, meek, and obfs4 are harder to fingerprint than traditional VPNs, making them safer alternatives.

VPNs are not a silver bullet

Zach cautioned that all traffic can be fingerprinted if it shares observable patterns, however. More advanced government censorship operations often try to block VPN protocols, but doing so can cause collateral damage, like disrupting legitimate websites and communication platforms.

“These requests are generally made with good intentions,” he acknowledged. “What’s worrying is broad requests for more data than is truly necessary.”

The less data collected by a VPN provider, the better. Zach recommended that when choosing a VPN, one look for verifiable no-logging claims and review the provider’s security policy and privacy stance. Check to see if they are open-source and have undergone third-party audits, he added.

“Many VPN providers use affiliate marketing and social media to promote their service, but it’s important to research their claims and look for how they’ve handled past requests for data,” he said. “In a technical sense, it’s possible for any provider to turn on logging at any time without your knowledge.”

Private options

Popular VPNs include NordVPN, ProtonVPN, SurfShark, and ExpressVPN. There are also decentralized VPN (DPN) options from companies like Mysterium Network, Orchid, Deeper Network, and Tachyon.

Beyond those basics?

“There are many great options—for less technical people, Tor Browser and Tor’s Orbot (which acts like a traditional VPN) are very easy to use and understand,” Zach said. “Outline VPN is another fairly easy option to understand, with easy-to-use cross-platform apps.

“Our service, FreeSocks, helps people in heavily censored countries connect to the Outline servers for free that we operate,” he added.

Zach explained that both Tor and Outline help circumvent censorship in many countries worldwide.

“It’s important to point out that using Tor Browser or Orbot is inherently one of the safest methods to circumvent censorship and protect a user’s privacy because of the fact it hops your connection through three randomized nodes when accessing the regular Internet through it,” he said. “This makes correlation attacks very difficult.”

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the massively popular Telegram messaging platform, said the actions of French authorities were “surprising for several reasons.”

Durov was arrested when he landed at Paris–Le Bourget Airport on Aug. 25, and was subsequently indicted for the use of Telegram for illegal activities, including drug trafficking, organized fraud, and the distribution of child pornography. French officials said Durov’s company had not done enough to combat criminal activity on Telegram, and that Telegram had not been responsive to its inquiries.

In a public post on his Telegram channel, Durov said he and his company were not hard to reach.

“I was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram,” he wrote, saying that reaching his company was as simple as a Google search for ‘Telegram EU address for law enforcement.’”

“Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests,” he explained. He added that ”The French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance,” including through the French consulate in Dubai, which he said he visited frequently.

He pushed back on assertions that Telegram is awash in criminals.

“The claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue,” Durov wrote. “We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day.”

He admitted, however, that the scale of the challenge is immense.

“Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950 million caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform,” he said. “That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard.”

According to Durov, Telegram doesn’t always find agreement with a country’s regulatory body when it comes to enforcement, and in those cases, it is willing to leave.

“We’ve done it many times. When Russia demanded we hand over ‘encryption keys’ to enable surveillance, we refused—and Telegram got banned in Russia,” he said. “When Iran demanded we block channels of peaceful protesters, we refused—and Telegram got banned in Iran.”

“We are prepared to leave markets that aren’t compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money,” he explained.

Durov criticized the very basis of the French government’s action, noting that when a country is typically dissatisfied with an internet service, the standard response is to take legal action against the service, not hold its CEO criminally accountable for third-party actions.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach—building technology is hard enough as it is.

“No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools,” he added.

Durov was released on judicial supervision during the investigation, and is required to stay in France in the interim.