In the recent market, in addition to the hot political MEMEs, there is another term quietly emerging in the Solana ecosystem—Blinks.

This article aims to spark discussion and explain what Blinks is, its ecosystem, and its application scenarios. It also provides an outlook on its development space, attempting to stimulate more assumptions and ideas about the future of Blinks.

What is Blinks?

On June 25th, the Solana Foundation announced the launch of two new features, Solana Actions and Solana Blinks, which will allow users to connect their wallets and send transactions without leaving the current website.

The Solana Foundation stated that by using Actions and Blinks, any website that can display a URL can use these new features. In other words, users can interact with on-chain activities, including Mint and Swap, embedded in social media with just one link.

Principles and Tutorials of Blinks

1. Technical Foundation

Blinks, short for Blockchain Links, is jointly created by Dialect and Solana, allowing developers to create Actions (formerly Solana Pay) to convert various Solana interactions into interactive buttons on X platform through links (URLs), enabling users to interact directly on Twitter without page redirection.

• Action is a standardized API that can return transaction information on the Solana chain. Developers can embed Actions directly into their Dapps, presenting interactive buttons and basic information to users on the front end, allowing users to execute on-chain transactions without having to navigate to other websites.
• Blink turns Action into shareable metadata links, serving as the presentation carrier for the Action client on the front end. In addition, Action and Blink are compatible with various formats such as links, QR codes, push notifications, and messaging apps, which can lead to a variety of application scenarios.

In simple terms, when users interact with the Blink button on the terminal application, the application will interact directly with the Solana network through Action.

The launch of Blinks and Actions improves the on-chain interaction experience for users. Although there is no revolutionary innovation at the technical level, its convenient functionality not only provides convenience for users within the industry, but also lowers the threshold for Solana to attract user increments and expand its reach.

2. Usage Tutorial

To use Blinks-related features, simply find "Experimental Features" in Phantom's settings and enable this feature to successfully activate it by refreshing the webpage.

Currently, Phantom, Backpack, Jupiter, Raydium, and Tensor Dapps all support Blinks.

Anyone can simply attach the target Dapp link in a tweet, and the X front end will display the Blinks interaction page after a successful send.

Blinks Ecosystem and Use Case Inventory

The following section will inventory the various use cases of Blinks, and introduce several main applications and developer tools in the current ecosystem, including: SEND, blnk.fun, Solana Summer Blinks, Blinks Editor, and Dialect.

1. Use Cases

Blinks have a wide range of use cases, and developers' creativity can flexibly deploy Blinks in various scenarios. Here are some examples for reference (image sources are all from @thesendcoin):

Use Case 1: Betting

Use Case 2: DM Multisig

Use Case 3: Airdrop Check

Use Case 4: Mini Games

Use Case 5: NFT Mint and Bid

Use Case 6: Event Tickets/Registration

Use Case 7: Paid Content Creation

Use Case 8: DM Transactions

Use Case 9: Tips

Use Case 10: Application Interaction

It is clear that the embedded principle of Blinks brings many combinable and fresh gameplay to its ecosystem, with a wide range of potential use cases. However, due to the large number and simplicity of these use cases, they will not be analyzed here. Instead, we will focus on several main projects currently existing in the Blinks ecosystem.

2. Main Ecosystem

In the Blinks ecosystem, there are currently several applications and development tools, including: SEND, blnk.fun, Solana Summer Blinks, Blinks Editor, and Dialect.

1) SEND ( @thesendcoin )

SEND is the first project in the Blinks ecosystem and is very active on X, releasing many application concepts related to Blinks. SEND is also a project supported by Solana co-founder @aeyakovenko, and seems to have a close relationship with the Solana official team.

On July 3rd, SEND officially released the Send It NFT through Blinks, with a total of 100,000 units, which sold out quickly and began trading on Tensor.

Later, on July 13th, SEND announced the launch of the $SEND token, which began trading on the 15th.

Based on SEND's situation on X, it is clear that this is a team with pre-prepared content and strategies for operations. For an early-stage ecosystem like Blinks, if high-quality projects can perform well in the secondary market early on, the ecosystem logically becomes more likely to attract and accept more increments, forming a leading flywheel effect. Currently, it seems that SEND has the potential to become a leader in the Blinks ecosystem compared to other projects, as its product quality and operations are more mature.

Surprisingly, both the token and NFT showed a trend of high opening and low performance.

The Send It NFT showed a strong trend of high opening and low performance, with the price rising from around $1 at the opening to a peak of $73 in just one week. However, a large amount of selling pressure followed, leading to a market collapse. Additionally, the $SEND token experienced a significant decline, with a slight increase at the opening, but the price was crushed to rock bottom within two hours, resulting in significant losses for many users. As a result, SEND has faced a lot of FUD in the community, and as of the time of writing, the team has not responded positively to the selling pressure.

The subsequent actions of the SEND team mainly focus on two aspects:

Announcement of Tokenomics

SEND Tokenomics (Source: SEND Official Twitter)

In simple terms, the official announcement stated that only $75,000 was raised for the initial sale and liquidity guidance, with a set FDV of $500,000. To ensure a fair launch, the team distributed a large number of chips to the Solana NFT community and Builder community. To prevent snipers from obtaining a large number of chips, they opened the Alpha Vaults, setting a soft cap of 999 SOL (approximately $150,000), but ultimately received 720,000 SOL (approximately $105 million), with the excess amount already being refunded by the team.

The official team seems to be trying to indirectly indicate that the selling pressure is from the community and early holders, rather than from the team.

SEND Alpha Vault (Source: Metaora)

On the other hand, the SEND team has launched the Blinks Explorer, where all users can submit Blinks on onlyblinks.com.

In the browser, the team has categorized various Blinks, allowing all users to view the latest and hottest Blinks in real-time. For users, in addition to finding Blinks on X, they can also quickly filter through the browser, making onlyblinks a valuable addition to the Blinks ecosystem from a practical perspective.

Due to its high opening and low performance, the current popularity of SEND has decreased significantly, and the community has not yet developed significantly. However, due to its close relationship with Solana official, there may still be some exposure and opportunities. For SEND, as well as Blink itself, it may still require some time for observation.

2) blnk.fun ( @blinkdotfun )

blnk.fun is a meme imitation platform similar to pump.fun, with a frontend similar to Pump. The gameplay involves purchasing memes through the blnkfun frontend and directly sharing Blinks with purchase links on X. The difference is that there is no bonding curve setting, and the tokens are listed on the DEX as soon as they are issued, weakening the PVP attribute. Essentially, it is another low-threshold launch platform for memes.

Currently, some of the MEME tokens on the platform have a certain trading volume, but the UI is not as refined as Pump.fun. It lacks embedded candlestick charts, and the holding addresses do not have developer notes and holding ratios, so there is still room for improvement in terms of functionality.

Another issue is that the contract address of the tokens is not clearly displayed on the purchase interface, and it seems that the contract is not directly posted, requiring users to find it through SolScan. However, there is a significant discrepancy between the address copied into Birdeye.so and the token holdings of large accounts, and there is also a discrepancy in market value. It is currently unclear whether blnkfun is involved in data falsification, or if there is an error in the output from the Birdeye platform. As it is still in the early stages, the risk is relatively high, so readers should exercise caution.

3) Solana Summer Blink ( @SolanaSumerBL )

Solana Summer Blink is also an active project in the Blinks ecosystem. The team has issued NFTs of the same name and has attempted to build a community around the NFTs.

The total supply of NFTs for this project is 1 million, and they were made available to the community in the form of free minting, with each wallet being able to mint an unlimited number. The extremely large total supply not only lacks scarcity but also favors scientists who mint in bulk, so the speculative value of the project's NFTs is not high. Additionally, due to these issues, the minting website experienced a large number of visits and clicks in a short period, causing the backend server to crash. The team tweeted that the developers had worked overnight to maintain and modify the code, and it would be back online today (July 18).

Currently, the project's official website is inaccessible and has been flagged as a malicious website by Phantom. Readers should be aware of the risks and refrain from interacting with the project for the time being.

It is worth mentioning that Toly also forwarded calls for this project. This indicates that the quality of projects forwarded by Toly has not undergone strict scrutiny and is aimed at increasing the popularity of the Blinks ecosystem. However, the quality of the products varies, so readers should assess the risks themselves.

4) Blink Editor ( @zen913 )

Blink Editor is a low-threshold platform for quickly creating Blinks, developed by @zen913.

After connecting the wallet, users only need to select the type of Blink they want to create, making it easy and quick to create their own Blink without any knowledge of code. The overall process is similar to creating tokens on Pump.fun and is very simple to operate.

The founder of @therealmasknetwork, @suji_yan, donated 0.1 ETH to ZEN, and more features for Blinks are currently in development, with the red packet feature set to be launched soon.

5) Dialect ( @saydialect )

As the developer of Action and Blink, Dialect itself provides a convenient way to convert URLs to Blinks. Users simply need to visit their website dial.to, enter the target URL, and submit the conversion. In addition, there is a more "traditional" Dialect plugin available for download.

However, since Blinks can be sent directly on X, and there is a certain learning curve, the frequency of users using Dialect may not be too high. It remains to be seen whether the Dialect team will design and implement more features, styles, and gameplay to attract users to use their product in the future.

In addition to the above applications, there are many other Blinks that can be found and viewed on X or OnlyBlinks. The Blinks ecosystem is still in its early stages, and with the continuous emergence of new ideas, there will undoubtedly be more Blink Dapps entering the market in the future.

Imagining the Space for Blinks

The topic of Mass Adoption has always been controversial, and the market is currently heavily influenced by existing assets, with altcoins following the market trend but not leading it, resulting in overall low sentiment. In order to truly welcome a bull market and the main upward trend, in addition to the need for a relaxed external macro and regulatory environment, the internal crypto market also needs a narrative that can truly break through and lead to real-world applications, attracting and guiding new participants into the market.

SocialFi? GameFi? Account abstraction? AI? RWA? DePin? NFT? Perhaps this question can only be answered after going through a complete cycle, or maybe even longer. However, this does not prevent us from opening up the space for imagination within the existing narratives.

As most participants in the market, only by fully understanding the various potential possibilities, making judgments, and positioning in advance, can we have the opportunity to reap joy and freedom when the trend arrives.

1. Blinks Breeds Scams, Full of Risks

Before imagining Blinks, it is necessary to pour cold water on everyone.

The blockchain is already a dark forest, with assets being stolen and token rug events happening every day. Due to the learning curve of blockchain principles and usage, as well as the high frequency of phishing websites, users are defenseless in the market. The emergence of Blinks further promotes the increasingly rampant blockchain scam behavior.

Blink interaction is on-chain interaction.

Any operation through Blink will require wallet authorization and signature. We know that for phishing websites, once the wallet is authorized, it is almost equivalent to the funds being stolen. Blink facilitates users' normal on-chain experience, but it also facilitates phishing groups. In the future, it may not even be necessary to create a phishing website frontend, just convert the link to Blink, and it will be "convenient" to take the assets in the interacting wallet. Therefore, security is the first and most important test for Blinks to move towards Mass Adoption. Readers must triple-check the X account sending Blinks and Blinks themselves when interacting with Blinks, use a new wallet for interaction as much as possible, and use external security plugins to help identify phishing links to avoid unnecessary financial losses.

In addition, the risks of Blinks also come from various projects and project teams of varying quality.

SEND's high opening and low performance have hurt the community supporters, and Solana Summer Blinks itself is technically immature, with its official website being flagged as a phishing site by Phantom. There will likely be more such phenomena in the future, so readers must also pay attention to the risks when making related investments.

2. Mass Adoption Concept, Attention Economy, Solana Flywheel

Why does Blinks have room for imagination?

• Timing: The current bull market is about to usher in the main upward trend, with a strong expectation of a Fed rate cut in September, Trump endorsing cryptocurrencies, and a high probability of winning in November.
• Location:

Blinks are backed by the Solana ecosystem. AI, DePin, and various DeFi applications are popular narratives, with innovative projects emerging constantly. Most importantly, MEME culture is prevalent, and high TPS and low Gas naturally make it more user-friendly for retail investors, with a significant attention economy effect.

On the other hand, X is one of the largest social media platforms in Web2, with nearly 1 billion users and over 400 million active users. The potential for the spread and impact of Blinks on X will be considerable.

• People:

Stripe announced in April this year that it would support USDC payments again. In February of this year, Stripe completed a $695 million financing, with a valuation reaching $95 billion. In the USDC payment video shown by Stripe, the Phantom wallet makes payments through Solana, indicating a close relationship with the Solana official. This may become the leading business of Stripe's crypto payment sector in the long term.

In addition to Stripe, on May 29th, PayPal's stablecoin PYUSD also went live on Solana, further expanding the payment landscape.

On the other hand, the Sol wallet TipLink has a strong background. In February last year, it received investment from Multicoin and Red Shirt, with participation from Solana Ventures, Circle Ventures, and Alameda. With these institutions' close relationship with Stripe, TipLink may also be promoted outside the circle.

The Solana Foundation announced on July 19th that it will launch a $400,000 grant program for Blinks developers. As a feature launched by the Solana official, Blinks will undoubtedly promote the development of its ecosystem applications.

Therefore, we can envision a Solana Mass Adoption flywheel built on the foundation of the Sol ecosystem, with Stripe as the intermediary, and X as the receiver:

Blinks itself does not focus on technological innovation but emphasizes improving user experience. As on-chain shopping, on-chain betting, on-chain voting, and on-chain one-click purchase rebates gradually become popular and widespread, the marginal effect of the attention economy will increase, multiplying the attractiveness to new users outside the circle. This is where Blinks can provide a very low-threshold market entry solution for outside users, bridging the traditional and crypto C-end markets.

When these favorable factors are combined, for a Solana ecosystem-to-C technology that is still in its very early stages and has a very broad target audience, the author believes that Blinks still have considerable application prospects and development potential in the medium to long term.

Contributors: Cage / Mat / Darl

Editing and Proofreading: Punko

Special Thanks: Thanks to the above contributors for their outstanding contributions to this issue.

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