Written by: 0xjs@Golden Finance
If you follow Solana, your Crypto Twitter feed must have been abuzz with information about Solana’s new features Actions and Blinks in the past 24 hours.
Swapping directly on Twitter will change the way users interact with the Solana ecosystem, linking Solana to the entire Internet, surpassing Farcaster Frames, etc. These are all words of praise for Actions and Blinks.
Is this true? What are Actions and Blinks? What will they bring to Solana? This article briefly analyzes them.
What are Actions and Blinks?
Actions and Blinks are an ambitious new protocol for Solana that aims to share Solana anytime, anywhere, launched by Dialect in partnership with Solana.
Actions is a protocol for creating and delivering Solana transactions via URLs, making Solana shareable anywhere. Blinks, full name Blockchain Links, is a client that detects Action URLs and expands them into full experiences, like Link Previews with interactive features. In short, Actions are APIs, and Blinks creates their interfaces.
Solana's official website describes Actions and Blinks as follows: Traditional on-chain transactions are locked in applications or complex interfaces, which greatly increases the difficulty for people to use crypto products. With Solana Actions, any transaction can be converted into Blinks that can be shared anywhere on the Internet without the need for third-party applications. Now you can request payments via SMS, vote on governance in chat rooms, and buy NFTs on social media. Everything is possible. It's time to connect Solana to the entire Internet.
How they work
Action is an API that helps simplify on-chain interactions into a simple set of HTTPS requests, which makes it easy for developers to seamlessly integrate on-chain activities into Web2 applications. It allows Solana transactions to be sent in a variety of ways, such as widgets or buttons on websites, QR codes similar to Solana Pay.
The Actions API mainly consists of making HTTP requests to the Action URL endpoint and processing the responses related to the Action. GET requests return metadata about which Actions the URL can execute and an optional list of related Actions, while POST requests return a signable transaction that will be executed on the chain or off-chain service.
The process is as follows:
The user presses a button or link or scans a QR code, prompting the Action client to send a GET request to the Action provider.
The provider responds with metadata and available actions, and the client displays a UI containing those actions.
The user interacts with the Action, and the client makes a POST request to the provider using the public key you selected.
The provider responds with a custom transaction, and the client displays it on the UI
The user approves the transaction and signs it, and the client sends it to the blockchain
In short, Actions make it easy for developers to integrate Solana blockchain transactions into their app’s user flow without redirecting them from the app they’re using (like Twitter, Discord, or even Medium).
Blinks extends the functionality of Solana Actions by converting them into shareable, metadata-rich links. These links enable clients (such as wallet extensions and bots) to provide additional UI options for interacting directly with Solana Actions. Currently, Dialect is the most popular client provider that allows UI client-side mode rendering.
Blinks can be linked to Actions in three ways:
Share an explicit Action URL, such as `solana-action:https://actions.alice.com/donate`. Here, only supported clients (such as Dialect) can render Blinks, and there will be no fallback.
Share links to sites linked with the Action API via the actions.json file on the site's root directory.
Embed the Action URL into the URL of a Blink provider (such as Dialect) — https://blink.to/?action=<action_url>
Actions and Blinks integration and new use cases
How to start the Solana Action function:
1. Open the Solana browser wallet extension. 2. Settings. 3. Click “Experimental Features”. 4. Launch Solana actions on http://x.com
After the wallet supports the Action function, a direct use case is to swap from tweets, as shown in the following figure:
Currently, many applications have integrated Solana's new Actions and Blinks features. Now users can directly use Twitter or other websites without jumping: trade with Jupiter & Meteora, buy tokens with Phantom, buy in bulk with Tensor at floor price, buy LST with Sanctum, subscribe to premium content with Access Protocol, donate to creators with Sphere and Cubik, vote with Realms and Helium, and mint NFTs with Truffle. Of course, the premise is that you have installed the plug-in wallet and enabled the Action feature.
Will Actions and Blinks really lead to Mass Adoption?
How to achieve blockchain mass adoption? The answer is simple: you must reach users on the apps and websites they already use and love the most.
Actions and Blinks can solve part of the problem. The Solana Foundation said that Solana Blinks turns any Action into a shareable link, allowing any website that displays a URL to become a place where Solana transactions can be conducted. Therefore, Blinks turns a website or social media platform into an interface for on-chain transactions without taking users elsewhere, which will make Dapp more accessible and user-friendly.
Solana just launched a game-changing product: Blinks, according to crypto user Mike. These blockchain links let you trigger Solana actions anywhere you can share a link online. Yes…even on X! Imagine initiating a transaction from: a button in an app, a QR code, a shareable link. Web3 just got a lot more accessible.
But there are also some opposing views.
First, to use the interactive interface displayed by Blinks, users need to install the dialect plug-in or enable the Solana wallet browser plug-in. There have been many Web3 products implanted into Twitter through plug-ins, but they have returned to silence after the initial noise. This is because installing the plug-in itself is a great friction.
Secondly, Solana’s new features are likely to be adopted by scammers on a large scale first. On Twitter, where phishing is rampant, the Actions and Blinks features are likely to greatly improve the efficiency of fraud and reduce the cost of fraud. Scammers previously needed to carefully create phishing websites to lure users, but now they only need some simple UI and metadata to carry out large-scale phishing scams. Therefore, Blinks urgently needs to strengthen risk control and anti-fraud capabilities.
User X ypppy said, "Great integration, hopefully it won't become a scammers' paradise."
For security reasons, Action currently adopts a registration permission system. Actions need to be registered at the official registration office (https://dial.to/register). The following figure shows all the actions that have been registered.
Actions和Blinks Vs. Farcaster Frames
After the release of Solana’s new features, many people naturally thought of Farcaster’s Frames feature.
Solana Labs advisor Jordan believes that Blinks takes some of the best ideas from Farcaster Frames, while Actions takes some of the best ideas from Solana Pay transaction requests and Dialect smart messages, and combines them together to form something cool and unique.
Crypto KOL Ignas said: Solana builders do have different ideas: Solana's Actions and Blinks are similar to Frames on Farcaster, but Blinks can be used on X where most crypto users are. (This round) Solana scored 10 points.
Crypto developer Aaron Elijah Mars said, will Farcaster Frames die? Farcaster Frames is an extension of Open Graph that generates cool thumbnails on Twitter. It is an open standard, which means that anyone can integrate it into their application. Farcaster Frames can also run anywhere and can integrate Blinks. On the other hand, Blinks is permissioned. . . Blinks focuses on on-chain interactions, has very few customizations and no interactivity, while Frames is great for interactive content but lacks proper on-chain integration. Their value propositions are completely different, and I think they can definitely coexist.
Some useful links
Solana official website interpretation: https://solana.com/solutions/actions
Solana documentation: https://solana.com/docs/advanced/actions
GitHub repository: https://github.com/solana-developers/solana-actions
Dialect Blinks extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/dialect-blinks/mhklkgpihchphohoiopkidjnbhdoilof
Currently registered actions: https://actions-registry.dialect.to/all
Action Registry: https://dial.to/register
Actions converted to Blinks URL: https://dial.to/
