When Apple’s latest iPhone offering was revealed with an eyebrow-raising price tag of $999, it prompted a slew of social media rants about “things you could buy with $999”. But Sirin Labs could have the most tempting alternative yet: the Finney blockchain smartphone.
The brainchild of Israeli entrepreneur Moshe Hogeg, who made a splash with his $16,000 debut Solarin luxury smartphone, the Finney smartphone will have features that are aimed to please the crypto community. These include secure P2P resource sharing, built-in cold storage crypto wallets, distributed ledger consensus and three-factor authentication based on biometric, lock pattern and behavioural inputs. Bitcoin enthusiasts will also note the homage to one of the original developers of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, Hal Finney.
The Finney won’t forget that it’s a smartphone for modern users either, with a 5.2-inch QHD display and 256 GB internal memory. It puts the iPhone X to shame in some respects, promising 8 GB RAM (compared to iPhone X’s 3GB), and 16MP main and 12MP front cameras (iPhone X has them at 12MP and 7MP respectively).
The only catch is that Sirin Labs will require tens of millions of dollars to fund the development of Finney and an accompanying blockchain PC. And they’re going the route of scores of other blockchain startups: by launching an initial coin offering (ICO).
The Sirin Labs ICO will sell a new SRN token to the public in a 14-day period to be announced soon. Once issued, Finney users will be able to share data, battery power and processing power with other Finney users – buying resources with the SRN token.
If enough funds are raised, the products will take at least nine months to develop.
