Solana News Today: Solana Mobile Ships Seeker Phone Amid Base Outage and Jito Governance Shift

The Protocol: Solana’s Seeker Mobile Begins to Ship Also: Base Block Production Failure Due to Sequencer, Jito Proposes Rerouting Block Engine Fees and Cardano Core Devs Get $70M Budget. [1]

Solana’s Seeker mobile phone, a next-generation crypto-native device developed by Solana Mobile, has begun shipping to customers following a strong pre-order response. The device is positioned as an evolution of the previously released Saga phone, offering improvements in design, usability, and battery life. With a price point of $500 and 150,000 pre-orders from over 50 countries, the Seeker is aimed at active Solana users who demand fast, mobile-first on-chain transactions. Emmett Hollyer, general manager at Solana Mobile, highlighted that the phone is not designed for casual crypto users but rather for those who regularly engage with the Solana network [1].

Meanwhile, Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network operated by Coinbase, experienced a 33-minute block production halt earlier this week. The issue stemmed from a sequencer failover that did not recover as expected. The Conductor module, designed to manage leadership transitions in the network, failed to properly provision a new sequencer, leading to a temporary stall in block production. Engineers manually resolved the issue, but the incident exposed potential operational vulnerabilities in layer-2 systems reliant on centralized sequencers [1].

In a separate development, Jito Labs introduced a governance proposal (JIP-24) aimed at decentralizing the Jito network by redirecting all block engine and Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM) fees to the Jito DAO treasury. Currently, Jito Labs receives 3% of the Block Engine’s rewards, with the remaining 3% going to the DAO. Under JIP-24, the full 6% of fees would go to the DAO, strengthening tokenholder influence and reducing the lab’s direct economic control. Jito Labs emphasized that the proposal aligns with its commitment to optimize value accrual for tokenholders and reinforce DAO governance [1].

Cardano’s core development team, Input Output Global (IOG), secured a $71 million budget through a community governance vote. The allocation, representing 13% of the Cardano protocol’s treasury, will fund network upgrades over the next 12 months. Key projects include Hydra, a layer-2 scaling solution, and Project Acropolis, which aims to improve node architecture and developer accessibility. The budget is subject to milestone-based payments and will be overseen by an independent governance body and smart contracts to ensure accountability [1].

The developments highlight a broader trend of innovation and governance evolution within the blockchain ecosystem. Solana’s push into mobile-first crypto solutions, Base’s operational challenges, Jito’s governance overhaul, and Cardano’s funding boost all underscore the ongoing maturation of blockchain infrastructure and community-driven governance models. As these projects advance, they are likely to influence user adoption and developer activity, with potential ripple effects across the broader crypto market [1].

Source: [1] The Protocol: Solana’s Seeker Mobile Begins to Ship Also: Base Block Production Failure Due to Sequencer, Jito Proposes Rerouting Block Engine Fees and Cardano Core Devs Get $70M Budget. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2025/08/06/the-protocol-solana-s-seeker-mobile-begins-to-ship