Background: FINNEY Phone Switches to Ethereum
Sirin Labs, the Israeli company known for its military-grade phone Solarin, announced in September 2017 the launch of FINNEY, the first blockchain phone. The original plan was to run FINNEY on IOTA's Tangle distributed ledger technology. However, Sirin Labs changed its mind and moved to the Ethereum blockchain. In an interview, CEO Moshe Hogeg stated: “We are not working with IOTA anymore. We considered it carefully and decided to take a different route.” CMO Nimrod May elaborated: “When FINNEY launches, we will use the Ethereum blockchain, running through full nodes hosted by Sirin Labs. Since the whitepaper, our plan has always been to migrate the SRN token and ecosystem to a ‘next-generation blockchain’.” May also noted that FINNEY would process transactions via a series of Sirin Labs-hosted full nodes, implying a private Ethereum chain rather than the mainnet. He added that Ethereum is not FINNEY’s final home due to transaction cost concerns; the phone will eventually migrate to a blockchain “designed for FINNEY” to enable low-cost micro-payments.
IOTA Token Plunges
The abrupt switch raised doubts about IOTA’s technical soundness, accelerating the sell-off in MIOTA. According to CoinMarketCap, MIOTA crashed nearly 17.5% on August 7, hitting a low of $0.6770. Since July 29, MIOTA’s market cap has evaporated over $800 million, threatening its top-10 ranking. As of 2:30 PM Beijing time on August 8, MIOTA’s market cap stood at $1.96 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of $71.27 million and a price around $0.70.
Future Outlook: FINNEY’s Blockchain Choice
Sirin Labs’ custom mainnet deployment may take considerable time. May said the company has explored IOTA and Cardano but is still searching for a suitable distributed ledger technology—even considering building its own long-term solution. In the interim, FINNEY will use an Ethereum private chain as a stopgap before migrating to a custom chain optimized for low-cost micro-payments.