Will Solana Blinks create an on-chain rebate era?

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), which will allow users to connect and send transactions without leaving the current website.

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

What is Blinks?

Blinks, short for Blockchain Links, is jointly created by Dialect and Solana. It allows developers to create “Action” (formerly known as “Solana Pay transactions”). Users only need to convert various Solana interactions (such as voting, donation, minting, swap, payment, etc.) into operation buttons on platform X through links (URLs), without page redirection, to directly perform operations on platform X.

Blinks transforms Actions into shareable, metadata-rich links, simplifying distribution channels and user workflows. In addition, Actions and Blinks can be distributed in various formats such as links, QR codes, push notifications, messaging apps, and more.

Blink Actual Operation

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 feature;

After completion, refresh the browser to interact with Blinks on X.

Jupiter also shared a real-time example, allowing users to use SOL to purchase Jupiter Token through blink.

Relying on Web2 to go beyond the circle

When it comes to “how to promote blockchain to a billion people”, jon wong, the engineering director of Solana Foundation, once said: “We must reach out to them where they are - their favorite apps and websites.”

From the release of Solana mobile to Blinks, which relies on traditional social media, Solana has always been in the user’s reach, trying to help Web3 break out through the form of linking Web2.

Currently, Blinks is widely regarded as the key to further mass adoption of Solana. Tolga, the co-founder of Solana, sees Blinks as a “gateway to turning Web2 into Solana L2”, and states that Blinks will be backed by Solana 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 user-friendly.

But in fact, in the same way as embedding on-chain operations in social media, Blinks’ social market is broader and more extensive than Frames, and its audience is wider. The Frames framework is only rooted in the Warpcaster, the only Dapp, while Blinks is universal for any application.

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

Blinks is more similar to TON, while the latter puts social before chain.

Just like Taobao and Douyin, Taobao uses universal links to acquire customers through Douyin channels, while Douyin has opened its own Douyin Mall by leveraging its user advantages.

TON relies on its own mature Telegram to create natural user and application advantages. The built-in TON Wallet, together with a variety of dummy-operated Web3 Click Games, successfully integrates Web3 into Web2 social networking.

Solana, on the other hand, relies on mature on-chain operations and security, uses Blinks as a gateway, and leverages Web2 social media channels such as X, Ins, Discord, etc. with wider user reach to promote on-chain operations in Web3.

More ideas: DEX commission rebate

While the public focus on Blinks functionality is more on mass adoption and Web2 draw attention, some users have already started to shift their focus to the commission of DEX links (URLs).

As mentioned above, if Solana is likened to Taobao, Blinks provides commission links for product promotion, while Web2 social media becomes a customer acquisition channel.

Solana ecosystem Dex Meteora founder, in a recent demo video, demonstrated the memecoin rebate function built on Blinks functionality by Meteora. When users trade memecoin using the link generated by Blinks through Meteora, the link creator will receive partial referral rebates.

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

Traditional DEXs cannot identify the source of users, making it difficult to determine the attribution of rebates. However, Blinks has successfully solved this problem by allowing users to interact with the blockchain through specific URLs.

In the cryptocurrency world, the spread and dissemination of FOMO are crucial to the speculation of MEME, and Blinks solves these two core issues at once.

If, as the founder of Meteora claims, the DEX commission mechanism is popularized and improved with the blessing of Blinks, then Blink is expected to bring new possibilities and opportunities to the entire Solana encryption ecosystem.