The Solana Foundation, in collaboration with Dialect, has recently released one of the coolest 0-1 innovations I have seen in the crypto space.

Blinks (Blockchain Links) and Solana Actions are ways to interact on-chain from anywhere on the internet. Anywhere you can share a link, you can create an Action.

Imagine you log onto Twitter (I refuse to call it “X”), and you see a trusted shit coin trader that you believe to have a great hit rate has just shared a blink. This particular blink is to Jupiter, where the latest shiny meme coin has just crossed the chasm from pump.fun and made it onto Raydium and thus Jupiter.

You, being a gambling addict, think, “Yeah, I like this guy, I am gonna pick some of this up”.

From here, you could directly full-stack your SOL or USDC holdings into said shitcoin without the need to leave Twitter. You simply click the corresponding buy buttons, and your Phantom or Backpack wallet will prompt you to sign the transaction, and there you go. Your degeneracy now has no bounds. Literally.

Note: You need to head to settings in your wallet and opt-in to use this feature.

This is the first use case that came to my mind, but it is certainly not limited to this. NFT mints, purchases, governance votes, staking/liquid staking… basically, any on-chain Action you can think of can be shared through blinks anywhere on the internet.

Implications for User Adoption

As the initial rollout starts, blinks will be only available on Twitter. Following that, it appears that you will be able to create an Action anywhere you can share a link. This may be Telegram, Discord, Reddit, or absolutely anywhere…

This embedded experience thing has been tried previously in a crypto/web2 environment with Farcaster and their implementation of Frames.

Farcaster is a decentralised social network that enables the development of social applications such as Warpcast, which takes inspiration from the best parts of Twitter and Reddit.

Info: https://docs.farcaster.xyz/learn/what-is-farcaster/frames

Frames is/was a great first step to having native on-chain experiences front and centre where the end user is.

For those creating the frame and the call-to-action, you are limited to those that are on Warpcast. Downstream to that, you are also limited by who actually sees the post with the Frame in it and the ability to share it elsewhere.

There has almost certainly been some inspiration taken from Frames here but with infinitely greater reach.

There is nothing stopping blinks being used on Warpcast or any other Farcaster (or Lens) application in future, either.

What I like most about blinks as a product is that it truly meets the users where they are. Dialect use a great line in their copy which says “Putting the Crypto in Crypto Twitter”. It is undeniable that the main public town square for those in the industry is Twitter and as such, it makes sense to start there and expand.

Hurdles to overcome

Now, without getting too ahead of myself here the embeds and links will only be visible to those who have a Solana wallet that has blinks activated. This doesn’t immediately open up Solana to every single person on the internet.

The mobile-version will naturally have to switch off to the phantom wallet unless you are a psychopath who uses the Phantom browser to scroll Twitter… We are almost certainly going to see this get abused with phising links. My obvious advice would be to only interact with this on a separate wallet with a separate seed. If it is worth aping or doing with meaningful size, then you can go the regular route and make  sure everything is in order.

There is an ongoing directory currently and looking at the basic user journey to set up a blink it does require those creating an Action to register it with the Dialect team. They are also working to whitelist verified protocols and builders who building ontop of this tech.

I don’t think you should go near any blink if you hold a BAYC.

There has been a few cries for further documentation, repos and frameworks to enable developers to pick this up and run with it.

It is very early days so I expect this to be rolled out but I kinda agree, you have to strike whilst the iron is hot when you have a good thing.

That being said, there appears to be a developer community already forming around this which is calling for those interested to drop their idea below this Tweet.

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‍Conclusion

I’m personally going to look at how we can offer a blink so we can push it as a call to action for people subscribing to The Meal Deal (our premium research offering).

It makes sense with our largest distribution channel and audience being on Twitter to be able to share that blink there. I like this large push on Solana to making the regular user journey and experience have a lot less friction. The average attention span is rapidly declining and if a user has  the slightest inconvenience whilst trying to interact with an application, this can put them off for good. I can see this making a lot of sense with Solana Pay and TipLink integrations for commerce, too. Given the Shopify integration there are a million weird and wonderful ways that blinks and actions can be used. I look forward to seeing all the usecases as they unfold.

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