Will Blinks lead to mass adoption of Solana? Industry insiders debate

Author: Climber, Golden Finance

On June 25, the Solana Foundation announced two new product features, Solana Actions and Blinks (Blockchain Links). It allows users to integrate blockchain transactions into any Internet environment, which is expected to completely change the way users interact with blockchain.

In short, Solana Actions provides a standardized way to pass transaction APIs at multiple levels, passing signable transactions or messages directly from applications to users. That is, it allows users to perform on-chain transactions on various platforms, including websites, social media, and physical QR codes.

Blinks is a client application that converts Solana Actions into a shareable, metadata-rich UI for interacting with and executing Actions.

The application scenarios of Solana Actions are:

Staking SOL provides security for the Solana network, that is, liquidity staking.

Allow customers to pay at retail stores using QR code scanning.

Token minting.

Browse shopping sites and pay with crypto directly from product pages.

Fund trading accounts before margin calls.

Integrate blockchain capabilities into gaming platforms for in-game asset purchases and trading.

Blinks for:

Tip content creators on social media without complicated wallet setup.

Mint custom NFTs or participate in governance votes directly from a URL.

Let users vote on community policies via links in newsletters.

The benefits of using both are:

Enhance the user experience by bringing signable transactions to where the user is.

Increase accessibility to Web3 applications from any platform.

Remove the friction of multiple clicks on many websites to send on-chain transactions.

Simplify the process for developers to integrate on-chain operations into existing platforms, websites, or applications.

Since the Solana ecosystem has always been the focus of the crypto market, the two new product features announced by its foundation this time have also aroused more expectations from the outside world. Various institutions and analysts have publicly expressed their views on Actions and Blinks.

Positive views:

Chainlink Labs engineer @pappas9999: Ethereum has Lens Open Actions and Farcaster Frames, but they are limited to dApps built on its protocols. Solana Blinks can be integrated into basically any application, which makes them very powerful.

I look forward to trying Actions and Blinks in my spare time, and I am interested in seeing the cool use cases that developers come up with by combining traditional web applications with on-chain Solana transactions.

Eigenlayer engineer @dabit3: After building many Farcaster frameworks, I also looked at Solana Blinks + Actions and found that they have many similarities. But Blinks meets a user need, which may be more powerful and more viral.

This is a really good idea. The UX/design/implementation looks very sophisticated. The people involved did a great job. This is an example of an ecosystem coming up with a good idea that will benefit everyone outside the ecosystem as well.

Multicoin Capital Managing Partner @KyleSamani: These primitives will drive adoption of crypto applications in a way that other ecosystems can't.

Variant Co-founder: Blinks is very suitable for attracting the existing user base that uses "desktop browser wallets", who are also used to using "desktop crypto Twitter". I expect we will see Blinks everywhere there is a wallet, including mobile users.

 QuickNode Analyst: Solana Actions and Blockchain Links (Blinks) are two major innovations of Solana, which are expected to completely change the way users interact with blockchains.

Youbi Capital JimsYoung: An exciting innovation. BLinks works well on desktop Chrome (P1), but on Mobile X (P2), it does not show the "Buy xx amount" option. Users need to click on the card element and navigate to the http://jup.ag website to make a purchase. Nevertheless, this is still an important step forward.

Researcher @MasterCui: Solana has recently launched Action & Blinks. Any client can obtain the corresponding unsigned transaction meta information through this URL. Blinks can parse Actions and build a front-end interactive interface, opening up the closed loop of transaction-->link--> visualization, which has great value in breaking the circle and socializing.

Research institution Eli5DeFi: Actions and Blinks connect any website or application, making Solana the center of on-chain interaction, making the user's web3 entry process simpler, and enhancing security by limiting interactions to whitelisted domains. This innovation is great, and I believe more applications will use it.

Analyst @invest_answers: This is the ultimate answer to changing the rules of the game. Turn any behavior into a link, save merchant and credit card fees, fast, user-friendly transactions, empower developers, don't miss this disruptive technology.

KOL@gemgemcrypto: It may be used by scammers. However, it has a bright future in token distribution, rewards and KOL.

Developer @fjun99: This may be the future direction towards large-scale applications. Among them, Blink is much more significant than ENS.

Negative views:

Celestia co-founder Nick White: I think Blinks will perform well on blockchain native platforms, such as some version of Solana equivalent to Farcaster, or Farcaster itself, but I am skeptical whether existing platforms such as Twitter will support it.

GoPlus Security @gbeekeeper: These two features have great value in breaking circles and socializing, but there is still a certain threshold, and they are not as fancy as advertised.

However, in order to see the interactive interface displayed by Blinks, users have to use plug-ins of certain products, so there is still a certain threshold. In the past, there were countless products that made a fuss about Twitter plug-ins, and the biggest obstacle was installing the plug-in itself.

On Twitter, where phishing fraud is already rampant, with the above interactions, it is likely to greatly improve the efficiency of fraud and reduce the cost of fraud. In the past, scammers needed to carefully create phishing websites to lure users, but now only a picture + some metadata are needed to carry out large-scale fraud. If the risk control and anti-fraud capabilities cannot be effectively added to Blinks, this feature is likely to be adopted on a large scale by scammers first.

Analyst @WorldNet_web3: What we are worried about is that the required dialect plug-in is an obstacle. Moreover, the risk of fraud on X has increased, and there are major security risks.

KOL@FefeDemeny: There is a huge risk factor in this innovation: fraud and fake tokens.

Researcher @MarginATM: The social network X has long been known for fraud, fake projects, and phishing. Are Solana Actions and Blinks really necessary and useful?