Will Solana Blinks usher in an era of on-chain rebates?

Written by: Mia, ChainCatcher

Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher

On June 25, the Solana Foundation announced the launch of two new features: Solana Actions (transactions) and Solana Blinks (blockchain links). The new features will allow users to connect and send transactions without leaving the current website.

The Solana Foundation said that by using Actions and Blinks, any website that can display a URL can use these new features. In other words, only one link is needed to embed on-chain activities including Mint and Swap into social media, which is reminiscent of the Frames feature on Farcaster.

What is Blinks?

Blinks stands for Blockchain Links. It was jointly created by Dialect and Solana. It allows developers to create "Actions" (formerly known as "Solana Pay transactions"). Users only need to convert Solana's various interactions (such as voting, donations, minting, swaps, payments, etc.) into operation buttons on the X platform in the form of links (URLs). Without page jumps, operations can be performed directly on the X platform.

Blinks transforms Actions into shareable, metadata-rich links, simplifying distribution channels and user operation processes. In addition, Actions and Blinks can be distributed through multiple formats such as links, QR codes, push notifications, messaging apps, etc.

Blink in action

Currently, Phantom and Backpack, DEX Jupiter, NFT platform Tensor, etc. already support Blinks.

Phantom shared a real-time example on its official social media, allowing users to purchase Bonk using SOL through blink.

First, open the Phantom wallet and go to the settings option;

Select the Experimental Features option.

Select to open the Actions function;

Once finished, refresh your browser and you should be able to interact with Blinks on X.

Jupiter also shared a live example, allowing users to purchase Jupiter tokens using SOL through blink.

Relying on Web2 to break out of the circle

When talking about “how to promote blockchain to a billion people”, Jon Wong, the engineering director of the Solana Foundation, once said: “We must reach users where they are - their favorite apps and websites.”

From the release of the Solana mobile phone to Blinks, which relies on traditional social media, Solana has always been within the reach of users, trying to help Web3 go viral by linking to Web2.

Currently, Blinks is generally seen as a way to achieve further mass adoption of Solana. Solana co-founder Toly even sees Blinks as "the gateway to turning Web2 into Solana L2" and said that Blinks will use Solana as a backing to ensure its economic security.

Many people compare Blinks to Farcaster’s Frames, both of which aim to make on-chain interactions more convenient and easy to use.

But in fact, compared with Frames, Blinks has a broader social market and a wider audience, as both are one-click embedded on social media. The Frames framework is only rooted in Warpcaster, the only Dapp, while Blinks is universal for any application.

Strictly speaking, Blinks does not have strong social attributes like Farcaster. It relies more on the existing social coverage of Web2 for application-level interaction and development.

Blinks is more similar to TON, which is social first and then chain.

Just like Taobao and Douyin, Taobao uses universal links to acquire customers through the Douyin channel, while Douyin uses its user advantages to open up its own Douyin Mall.

TON has created natural user and application advantages by relying on its mature Telegram. The built-in TON wallet, combined with various fool-operated Web3 Click Games, has successfully integrated Web3 into Web2 social interaction.

Solana, on the other hand, is backed by mature on-chain operations and security, using Blinks as a portal and Web2 social media with wider user base such as X, Ins, and Dsicord as channels to popularize Web3 on-chain operations.

More ideas: DEX rebates

While the public focus on Blinks’ functions is still on mass adoption and Web2 traffic, some users have begun to focus on DEX link (URL) rebates.

As mentioned above, if Solana is compared to Taobao, Blinks provides a rebate link for product promotion, and Web2 social media becomes a customer acquisition channel.

The founder of Solana ecosystem Dex Meteora demonstrated Meteora's memecoin rebate function built on the Blinks function in a recently released demonstration video. When users use Meteora to conduct memecoin transactions using the links generated by the Blinks function, the link generator will receive part of the promotion rebate.

The core of this rebate function is built on the Blink link, which is something DEX could not accomplish independently before.

Traditional DEX cannot identify the source of users, making it difficult to determine the attribution of rebates. However, Blinks successfully solves this problem by allowing users to interact with the blockchain through a specific URL.

In the cryptocurrency world, the spread and propagation of FOMO is crucial to the hype of MEME, and Blinks solves these two core problems at once.

If it is true as the founder of Meteora said, the DEX rebate mechanism is popularized and improved with the support of Blinks, then Blink is expected to bring new possibilities and opportunities to the entire Solana crypto ecosystem.