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Sirin Labs, the startup blockchain financed by almost $ 158 million of proceeds for the initial offer of coins (ICO), has released the long awaited "smartphone blockchain", the FINNEY.
The company presented the device on Thursday at a release party in Barcelona, which saw the presentations of several Sirin executives along with an appearance of the football legend and the ambassador of the Sirin Lionel brand Messi. CCN participated in the event and was able to spend some time with FINNEY during a demonstration with Sirin Labs' senior product manager, Yaron Kaplan.
FINNEY specifications
FINNEY was produced by the iPhone manufacturer Foxconn International Holdings (FIH) and features flagship features including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 6 GB of RAM, a 6-inch display, two cameras (12 MPx and 8 MP) and 128 GB of space. From the software point of view, it runs an ultra secure and Google-certified "fork" of Android "called Sirin OS that appeared for the first time on Sirin's first smartphone, the super-secure (and super expensive) SOLARIN. 39; company states that, in addition to its own line of devices, it intends to seek OEM partners to implement the Sirin operating system on other products.
Sirin said he chose to modify Android rather than use the default operating system to "overcome the innate security challenges associated with the use and storage of cryptocurrency on mobile devices". Sirin co-founder and chairman Kenes Rakishev explained that the intrusion prevention system of the operating system uses machine learning to monitor device parameters such as network, malware and device security definitions, including when the phone is offline.
Cold wallet isolated
Instead of storing private keys in a protected "enclave" (components that have not always been at the height of their name), the cold storage wallet, which has hardware completely separate from the rest of the device, is located on a " security screen "sliding to the top of the phone. Here, the private keys remain isolated from the phone's Internet-enabled native wallet until the user scrolls through the security screen and initiates a transaction.
Transactions can only be signed by the security screen, which ensures that the user's funds remain secure even if the device itself is compromised by the malware. For example, if a user tried to send money and a malicious application replaced the correct receiving address with one controlled by the hacker, this change would be evident on the security screen, similar to the conventional hardware portfolios.
"In an increasingly insecure digital world, where hackers in all corners of the globe are out to steal everything they can, consumers need a product that gives them confidence that their data is safe," he said Rakishev in the formal announcement. "Without any solution available until now, many crypto users have stepped back in a more primitive moment and used paper and pen to record their private key code, and this and other" cold storage "solutions are impervious to hack but they are also totally impractical for modern life FINNEY is unique and is the only phone with a built-in cold storage portfolio.Not there is anything else on the market. "
Like other hardware portfolios such as those produced by Trezor and Ledger, users can create and archive multiple crypt portfolios on a single device. By separating their funds in more than one portfolio, investors can protect their holdings from the proverbial $ 5-wrench attack. If a robber or another attacker attempts to force them to unlock their cryptographic wallet, they can enter the password on a low-value portfolio while other funds remain safe.
Cold storage protected by password or not, I'm still not sure I would feel comfortable carrying around large amounts of crypto in my pocket. But considering that many investors already do it with wallets that are much less secure, FINNEY is really a better option.
Native cryptographic exchange
In addition to a cold storage portfolio, FINNEY has an in-app token conversion (TCS) service that allows users to seamlessly exchange cryptographic tokens supported by the device without relying on a third-party portfolio. Sirin will act as a liquidity provider, which means that users will exchange funds with the company itself, not with a third-party cryptographic exchange, and conversion rates will be taken from CoinMarketCap. A Sirin representative told CCN that users will have to submit to local KYC / AML regulations before they can negotiate using TCS, although it is not clear exactly how this process will be managed.
One could see this service very popular among occasional investors, attracting a similar audience to Changelly and ShapeShift. However, convincing a crypto-curious friend or relative to buy a $ 999 device to facilitate their entry into the market seems like a hard sell. Since FINNEY is more likely to turn to cryptic "expert users", many device owners may be quite familiar with cryptocurrency exchanges that would prefer to use those platforms on the on-device conversion service. This is particularly true since at least at the time of launch, the service supports only three cryptocurrencies: Sirin Labs bitcoin, ethereum and token.
In addition, an increasing number of cryptographic hardware portfolios already offers users the ability to use Changelly, ShapeShift or another token conversion service from the device's wallet portal. Although these third-party apps charge service fees, they support a much wider range of resources than those of Sirin's TCS, at least at launch.
In short, FINNEY cryptographic conversion service is a useful feature, but it is not clear how much of a store will be for the target market of the device.
DApp store on device
FINNEY also has a dcentral decentralized application store (dApp), called dCENTER, which seeks to make the use of dApp more mobile-friendly and reduce the friction associated with onboarding. Currently, the dApp browser is only compatible with Ethereum, although a representative has said that Sirin plans to add support for other blockchains in future updates of the operating system.
Considering that, for all their hype, almost nobody uses dApps, the FINNEY dApp store could encourage more users to try these native blockchain applications.
The dCENTER also includes a "learn and earn" program through which dApps and other crypto startups can pay FINNEY owners to watch video ads, as well as airdrop tokens to their cryptographic portfolios.
The founder and co-CEO of Sirin Labs, Moshe Hogeg, has publicized this feature for its ability to help recover users for the initial cost of the device. After joking that he wanted to sell FINNEY for $ 1.00, he said that at the time of launch, the device comes pre-installed with more than $ 300 of airdrop advertising and incentives and hopes the future incentives will charge the phone for yes.
Of course, the attempt to cash out those funds transferred could cause headaches at the time of taxes and, unfortunately, this is an aspect of the encrypted experience that FINNEY is not able to simplify.
Sharing peer-to-peer resources
Perhaps FINNEY's most intriguing feature is peer-to-peer resource sharing, which leverages the Sirin OS software development kit (SDK) and Ethereum's smart contracts to enable users to seamlessly deploy their own device resources. others.
At the launch event, Amid Krelman, VP of Research and Development at Sirin, performed a live demonstration of resource sharing on the Ethereum testnet. In the demo (~ 27: 00 in the video above), one user has accepted to charge the phone of the other for an established amount of ETH. At the start of the transaction, the smart contract created a payment channel between the two devices and blocked the amount of the buyer's ETH in the contract.
While the first device charged the second, a real-time ticker kept track of what the buyer owed, like a gas pump. Then, once the device has been loaded, the smart contract has transferred the blocked ETH to the landlord's portfolio.
Of course, this specific example of sharing P2P resources is not exactly a killer app. It would require two individuals to have FINNEY and a charging cable but no access to electricity, just a fool will charge money to charge another person's phone, and only a paranoid asshole would require them to block that payment in an intelligent contract.
However, it was only a demo, after all, and this feature has numerous possible applications, including mobile data sharing. This, as pointed out by a colleague, could prove to be quite popular to offer service providers who offer unlimited data packages.
Price
FINNEY has peak specifications, and has been evaluated accordingly. Sirin Labs' previous smartphone offering, SOLARIN, debuted in 2016 with a $ 16,000 price tag. The FINNEY, however, is sold for $ 999, which is comparable to mainstream high-end models such as the iPhone XS and the Samsung Galaxy Note9.
Early supporters were able to pre-order FINNEY at a discount using SRN, which the company distributed during an initial coin offering (ICO) that raised almost $ 158 million. Now, customers can also purchase the device at full retail price using conventional payment methods, and the company announced at the event that the FINNEY would be further available on Amazon Launchpad – a program exclusive through which the technological giant helps startups launch products – from January.
How about HTC Exodus?
Sirin Labs is not the only company that markets a smartphone for crypto users. HTC, as reported by CCN, became the first mainstream manufacturer to do so when it launched Exodus, which should begin shipping at the beginning of December. HTC only accepts bitcoin and ethereum for Exodus and, even more significantly, the price is set at 0.15 BTC or 4.78 ETH and not pegged to USD. As a result, the device was priced in a comparable manner to FINNEY when the pre-orders were opened at the beginning of October, but can now be purchased for around $ 650 BTC or $ 560 of ETH.
Both companies claim that their device is the "first smartphone blockchain". Sirin, for his part, said that for all HTC talk, FINNEY – not Exodus – will be the first blockchain smartphone on the market. As Rakishev stated during his presentation (even if he does not refer directly to HTC): "We are the first and we are the best".
SRN is worth less on startup than ICO
In issuing FINNEY, Sirin Labs has also become one of the few ICO operators to translate its financing into a functioning product, although the SRN token continues to trade well below its ICO price and even below its value when cryptocurrency trades were first traded. In fact, the SRN price has fallen by 18% against the US dollar in the last 24 hours, which has thwarted the general market trend and made the chip by far the worst result of the top 100 cryptocurrency of the day.
The fact that a cryptographic token continues to trade so low even after its issuer has continued its stated roadmap is perhaps one of the safest representations of the degree to which the ICO mania had taken hold of the retail market between the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, but it has cooled down following a bear market that lasted for almost a year.
Final thoughts
At $ 999, it is difficult to find a single function that makes Sirin Labs FINNEY a product to be purchased for crypto users. (At least in the opinion of this author, but, again, I would make the same statement on the flagship Samsung and Apple, and I'm pretty happy to use a phone of almost four years that must be charged several times a day – not exactly the FINNEY target customer.) Despite this, the device is more than the sum of its parts, as the combination of its features gives users a simplified encrypted experience that keeps the focus on decentralization.
In the long run, it's easy to imagine that developers can use the Sirin OS SDK to create one or more apps that take full advantage of the potential of blockchain-protected P2P sharing. In the short term, if cryptographic users still spend $ 999 on a mobile device, why not FINNEY?
Featured image by Josiah Wilmoth / CCN
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