Swap directly in X? A quick look at Soalna’s new features Actions and Blinks

Written by: 0xjs@黄金财经

If you follow Solana, there must be a lot of information about Solana's new features Actions and Blinks in your Crypto Twitter stream in the past 24 hours.

Swap directly in Twitter, will change the way users interact with the Solana ecosystem, link Solana to the entire Internet, surpass Farcaster Frames, etc., these are all praises for Actions and Blinks.

Is it really so? What are Actions and Blinks? What will they bring to Solana? This article briefly analyzes it.

What are Actions and Blinks?

Actions and Blinks are an ambitious new protocol of Solana, designed to share Solana anytime, anywhere, which is launched by Dialect in cooperation with Solana.

Actions is a protocol for creating and delivering Solana transactions through URLs, making Solana shareable anywhere. Blinks, full name Blockchain Links, is a client that detects Action URLs and expands them into a complete experience, like Link Previews with interactive features. In short, Actions are APIs, and Blinks creates their interfaces.

Solana's official website said that 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 a blockchain link 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, and QR codes similar to Solana Pay.

The Actions API mainly consists of making HTTP requests to the Action URL endpoint and processing responses related to the Action. The GET request returns metadata about which Actions can be executed by the URL and an optional list of related Actions, while the POST request returns 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.

• Providers respond with metadata and available Actions, and clients display a UI containing those actions

• Users interact with Actions, and clients make POST requests to providers using a public key of your choice

• Providers respond with custom transactions, and clients display them on the UI

• Users approve and sign transactions, and clients send transactions to the blockchain

In short, Actions make it easy for developers to integrate Solana blockchain transactions into the user flow of their applications without redirecting them from the app they are 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 client-side mode rendering of UIs.

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 the Blinks, and there will be no fallback.

• Share a link to a website linked to the Action API via an actions.json file on the root of the website.

• 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 launch the Solana Action feature:

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 feature, a direct use case is to swap from a tweet, as shown in the figure below:

There are already many applications integrating 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 the 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 plugin wallet and enabled the Action feature.

Will Actions and Blinks really bring Mass Adoption?

How to make blockchain Mass Adoption? The answer is simple: users must be reached on their favorite applications and websites that they already use.

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. So Blinks turns a website or social media platform into an interface for on-chain transactions without taking the user elsewhere, which will be a great way to make Dapps more accessible and user-friendly.

Crypto user Mike said Solana just launched a game-changing product: Blinks. These blockchain links let you trigger Solana actions anywhere you can share a link online. Yes…even on X! Imagine initiating a transaction through: a button in an app, a QR code, a shareable link. Web3 becomes more accessible.

But there are also some negative 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. Because installing plug-ins itself is a great friction.

Second, 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 used to need 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.

X user ypppy said, "Very good integration, I hope it won't become a paradise for scammers."

Also based on security considerations, Action currently adopts a registration and licensing system. Actions need to be registered at the official registration office first (https://dial.to/register). The following figure shows all the actions that have been registered with permission.

Actions and Blinks Vs. Farcaster Frames

After the release of Solana’s new features, many people naturally thought of Farcaster’s Frames feature.

Jordan, consultant of Solana Labs, believes that Blinks absorbs some of the best ideas from Farcaster Frames, while Actions absorbs 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, which can generate cool thumbnails on Twitter. It is an open standard, which means that anyone can integrate it into their application. Farcaster Frames also runs everywhere and can integrate with Blinks. Blinks, on the other hand, is permissionless. . . Blinks is focused on on-chain interactions, has minimal customization 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/