Solana Mobile is rolling out a ratings and reviews feature for its decentralized application store. The move gives users a way to score and comment on dApps, a step the company says is meant to boost user engagement and push app quality higher. The feature positions Solana’s store as a direct competitor to the locked-in review systems run by Apple and Google.
A new layer of feedback
Until now, the Solana Mobile dApp Store offered listings but no public user feedback. That changes with the new system, which lets anyone who downloads an app leave a rating and a short written review. For developers, the hope is that honest, visible feedback will drive them to improve their work. For users, it means a way to signal which dApps are worth a try and which ones aren’t.
The store lives on Solana-compatible mobile devices, mainly the company’s own Saga phone. It doesn’t rely on a central authority to police reviews—the system is designed to run on-chain or through a decentralized mechanism, the company said, though specific technical details weren’t disclosed.
Competing with centralized stores
Apple’s App Store and Google Play have long dominated mobile app distribution. Both allow ratings and reviews, but they control what gets posted, remove content they don’t like, and ban apps that violate their rules. Solana Mobile is leaning into the opposite approach: a permissionless store where the community, not a corporation, decides what’s visible.
That’s the pitch, anyway. Whether users will actually migrate to a decentralized store remains an open question. The Saga phone has a small user base, and the dApp library is far smaller than what you’d find on iOS or Android. The new ratings feature might help, but it’s one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Solana Mobile didn’t provide any launch numbers or early usage statistics. It did say the feature is live now and available to all dApp Store users.
What’s next
The real test will be whether developers and users actually adopt the system. Without a critical mass of reviews, the feature could end up a ghost town. Solana Mobile hasn’t announced any incentive program to encourage early reviews, nor has it said whether it plans to expand the feature with photo uploads or detailed breakdowns. For now, it’s a straightforward star-and-text system, with the promise of more to come—if people use it.
