Solana launches Blinks feature, is Farcaster in danger?

Original title: " Solana introduces Actions and Blinks: The next step in bringing onchain to everywhere on the Internet"

Original author: @tpan

Original translation: Ismay, BlockBeats

Editor's note: With the development of Blockchain technology, user experience and security have always been the focus of major platforms. Solana launched the Actions and Blinks features last night, which triggered widespread discussion in the community. This is also reminiscent of the Frames feature on another popular social protocol Farcaster. They both show different paths to improve the convenience of on-chain interactions. Therefore, some people are worried that X will erode Farcaster's first-mover advantage with the help of Blinks. However, Dan, the founder of the Farcaster protocol, said in the community that Blinks can only be used on the web, but 88% of Twitter users are mobile phones, implying that the emergence of Blinks does not pose a threat to Farcaster.

Back to this translation, the author discusses the advantages, potential risks and future development prospects of these two innovative features. Whether it is the permissionless Frames, or the registration process to ensure the safety of Actions and Blinks, these new features are gradually changing the user's on-chain experience and improving the interaction standards of the entire blockchain ecosystem.

The following is the original text:

Earlier today, the Solana Foundation launched Actions and Blinks, an exciting feature that allows users to conduct on-chain transactions on any online platform. The announcement video released by the team shows the actual operation of the feature and how to use Blinks (blockchain links).

A brief introduction to Actions and Blinks

Actions were previously known as Solana Pay transactions. The broader “Actions” term expands the initial payments use case to cover other actions such as mint, swap, vote, etc.

Blinks (blockchain links) turn Actions into shareable, metadata-rich links that clients (the user interface part of an application) can expose more functionality for users to interact with.

Actions and Blinks can be distributed in a variety of formats: links, QR codes, push notifications, messaging apps, and more.

The integration was co-developed by Dialect Labs, a company focused on messaging, notifications, and in-app action products.

If you want to learn more, check out the official website and the developer documentation .

Actions and Blinks in Action

The best way to experience the new features is to see live examples! If you are interested in seeing these examples, install the Phantom or Backpack extensions on your desktop.

Phantom (crypto wallet) shared a live example that lets users buy Bonk with SOL using blink.

Jupiter also shared a live demo that lets users buy Jupiter tokens with SOL via blink.

These initial demos aren’t just cool — they have broad and exciting implications for future developments.

Making onchain easier: the pros and cons of blink

The benefits of Actions and Blinks are clear. They make on-chain transactions easier to conduct, expand channels of awareness and acquisition, and they are flexible enough to be used across a variety of applications and platforms, such as X, Discord, etc.

Fewer clicks = more convenience = higher likelihood of action or engagement

In the future, it may be possible that

Projects can launch their minting activities on mature markets such as Opensea or Magic Eden as well as platforms such as Discord, Telegram, and X, or only on the latter.

Projects and their respective community members can create new interaction models around participation, gamification, and referrals.

Users new to crypto and Web3 will experience on-chain actions for the first time through simple and friendly tutorial modules on trusted applications, rather than crypto wallet extensions.

On the other hand, there are some concerns about this new feature, especially on a platform like X, with the biggest being that Blinks could enable scams to flourish. Imagine a world where celebrities can launch their memecoin with a few clicks, and then promote it through Blinks (PS: the celebrity coin trend hasn’t stopped: Jason Derulo, Travis Barker, and 50 Cent have all recently launched their own tokens, alas).

Unsurprisingly, and thankfully, Solana is aware of the potential risks and abuse, so they’ve implemented some protections in their initial rollout:

At launch, extension partners (Phantom, Backpack, Dialect) will only “expand” registered Action URLs on X. Developers must register their Actions with Dialect, and Blinks will also present additional UI features for enhanced security.

Users must select a wallet that supports Actions and Blinks as this is an experimental feature.

If a user attempts to connect to a domain that is not on the whitelist, they will be prompted to confirm that they trust the site before proceeding.

With great power comes great responsibility, and fortunately, Solana understands the appeal of Actions and Blinks for mainstream adoption, but also recognizes that they are susceptible to abuse, so they are taking a slower rollout approach.

Wait, that reminds me…

Frames on Farcaster

Leaving aside the technical details (which I’m not qualified to get into), we have two different modern “widget” features that share a common goal of making on-chain interactions more convenient and easy to use.

Depth vs. Breadth

Despite feeling like it’s been ages, Frames were only launched about 5 months ago. Fast forward to today, and Frames usage continues to grow, and they even have their own trending tag, embedded as a core part of the Farcaster ecosystem.

Actions and Blinks, on the other hand, opt for a much larger reach, expanding discoverability, shareability, and virality across channels. While there are potential concerns about clients removing support for Blinks, the enhanced UI elements come from the Chrome extension itself, which makes it a game changer.

In short: X can’t “remove” Blinks, as the UI changes are based on the Chrome extension.

Who Can Deploy

Frames are virtually permissionless, as anyone can create and publish Frames. Actions and Blinks, on the other hand, have a sign-up process in place to ensure user security. Despite the slower rollout, I imagine the Solana developer community is excitedly experimenting behind the scenes, similar to the experiments the Farcaster community did when they launched Frames in January.

Solana and Dialect are also actively providing grants to support developers creating Actions and Blinks integrations.

Core Contributors and Ecosystem Growth

Farcaster Frames was developed by the Farcaster team and grew into a larger community effort.

For Actions and Blinks, the Solana Foundation has taken a more proactive approach from development to announcements (the Saga phone is another example of this approach). Each ecosystem and foundation has its own unique approach to ecosystem growth. This launch has raised concerns among developers in the Ethereum ecosystem, raising questions about different mindsets and coordination approaches.

With or without foundation support, I believe this development will be quickly emulated by other ecosystems. The benefits of its distribution are undoubtedly huge, and its upper limit is yet to be known.

Clients, on the other hand, are in an interesting position. Since Blinks are based on installed Chrome extensions, clients cannot "remove" them on the desktop. Will they consider working with Solana to create a more proactive user experience? If so, how?

Finally, and most importantly, consumers are being exposed to a new set of interaction-based experiences that are novel, convenient, and easy to use. The bar for a "good" on-chain consumer experience is rising rapidly, and this has been long overdue.

「 Original link 」

欢迎加入律动 BlockBeats 官方社群：

Telegram 订阅群： https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram 交流群： https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Twitter 官方账号： https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia