Arkham data shows that Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, has sent 199.9 ETH, which is worth more than $517,000, to a Gnosis Safe multi-signature contract.
There is a lot of speculation that this move was a gift to the ethOS project for the Ethereum phone. Ethos is an open-source mobile operating system made for Ethereum by a team at Freedom Factory that works under a fake name.
It was first released on some Android smartphones in late 2022 and then again the next year.
Users can write blockchain code and run decentralized applications (dApps) built on Ethereum using this operating system. The ethOS website says that the team, which was formed in 2021, anticipates to release more hardware later this year or early next year.
Ethereum’s Mobile Market Expansion
Even though Bitcoin has been around for 15 years, the blockchain business is still trying to get a lot of people to use it by making Web3 and real-world use easier to get to. It has been hard to get blockchain technology to work with mobile devices, but recent events show that progress has been made.
Such as, the Saga smartphone was released in June 2022 by Solana Labs, the group that made the Solana blockchain. With Solana dApps like Phantom Wallet already installed and running on Android, the device had slow sales at first.
In almost a year, only 20,000 units were sold. But when Saga 2.0 came out, things changed. Within a month, 100,000 copies were pre-ordered.
At the time of this report, it looked like Saga was ahead of ethOS, but their methods to combining blockchain with mobile technology are different.
The Ethereum and Solana blockchains have grown a lot in the past year. This means that ethOS and Saga could become major rivals in the blockchain mobile market.
