Beginning in 2026, Xiaomi will bundle a native SEI pockets on tens of millions of smartphones as a part of a broader push to convey crypto to on a regular basis customers.
Xiaomi and Sei accomplice on embedded crypto pockets
The Sei Growth Basis, a non-profit that helps the Sei community, has signed a worldwide partnership with Xiaomi to embed its crypto pockets and discovery app immediately into new telephones. Starting in 2026, all Xiaomi smartphones offered outdoors mainland China and america will include the software program pre-installed.
Xiaomi is the worlds third-largest cell vendor, with a market share of over 13%, trailing solely Apple and Samsung. This scale provides Sei a strong distribution channel for onboarding new customers into crypto with out requiring them to seek for or obtain a separate app.
The applying, constructed by Sei Labs, will permit customers to ship peer-to-peer funds, entry decentralized purposes, and discover a variety of Web3 merchandise. Furthermore, the pockets will act as a discovery hub, guiding customers towards onchain providers via an interface designed for mainstream audiences.
Stablecoin funds and retail integration
Past fundamental pockets features, Sei plans to introduce stablecoin funds at greater than 20,000 Xiaomi retail shops worldwide. The rollout will begin in Hong Kong and the European Union, with prospects capable of pay for smartphones, tablets and even electrical scooters utilizing stablecoins similar to USDC.
Based on a press launch shared with CoinDesk, the collaboration is predicted to provide tens of millions of individuals their first direct entry to crypto. Nevertheless, the impression shall be particularly robust in markets the place Xiaomi dominates, similar to Greece with a 36.9% share and India with 24.2%.
The corporate sees this as a bridge between conventional retail and digital belongings, with stablecoin transactions settling over the Sei blockchain. That stated, the success of this effort will rely on person expertise, regulatory readability and service provider readiness in every area.
Efficiency focus and onchain finance ambitions
Sei Labs Co-Founder Jay Jog argued that almost all blockchains have underinvested in efficiency. In an interview with CoinDesk throughout Devconnect Buenos Aires final month, he stated the staff is constructing infrastructure for the following wave of exercise, together with funds, buying and selling and real-world monetary quantity.
Jog described the networks ambition as making a form of decentralized NASDAQ, able to dealing with as much as 200,000 transactions per second. Furthermore, Sei goals to convey a broad monetary ecosystem onchain, from inventory buying and selling platforms to point-of-sale methods inside bodily shops.
To realize this, Sei makes use of a parallelized Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) structure that may course of hundreds of transactions per second, with finality in beneath 400 milliseconds. This near-instant settlement is designed to match or exceed the responsiveness shoppers count on from conventional fee rails.
World Cellular Innovation Program and developer funding
To drive adoption on cell, the Sei Growth Basis has launched a $5 million World Cellular Innovation Program. The fund is supposed to assist builders constructing consumer-facing purposes optimized for smartphones and different cell units.
Nevertheless, Jog acknowledged within the interview that capital alone won’t assure community progress. He famous that the largest bottleneck for a lot of Web3 tasks will not be fundraising, however discovering prospects and securing efficient distribution channels that put merchandise in entrance of customers.
In that context, having a Sei pockets pre-installed on tens of millions of Xiaomi units might present a strong answer. As a substitute of competing for consideration in crowded app shops, tasks deployed on Sei can attain customers via a default pockets atmosphere already current on their telephones.
From trying to find crypto to crypto discovering the person
Jog contrasted the Sei expertise with older blockchain, the place customers usually wait anxiously for confirmations. On Sei, he stated, a fee may be finalized so shortly that “you blink an eye fixed and the fee is finalized,” which can ease considerations for first-time customers and retailers.
This shift in pace and accessibility underpins the broader narrative of cell crypto adoption. Somewhat than requiring customers to hunt for specialised instruments and guides, the community needs to make Web3 performance seen and usable the second a tool is powered on.
Finally, Jog summed up the technique by saying that the business is shifting “from a world the place crypto is one thing you must discover, to 1 the place it finds you.” If profitable, the Xiaomi partnership and Sei cell integration might mark a major step towards mainstream, onchain funds and purposes.
In abstract, embedding a crypto pockets into Xiaomi smartphones, mixed with retail stablecoin assist and a $5 million developer program, positions Sei to check whether or not built-in {hardware} distribution and high-speed blockchain infrastructure can push Web3 into on a regular basis client life.