How does Solana Actions differ from Blinks compared to Farcaster and Lens?

Author: YB

Translation: Blockchain in Plain Language

Recently, Solana and Dialect jointly launched a new Solana concept called “Actions and Blinks,” which enables one-click operations such as exchange, voting, donation, and minting through a browser extension. Actions simplify the execution of various operations and transactions, while Blinks ensure network consensus and consistency through time synchronization and sequential recording. The combination of the two enables Solana to provide a high-performance, low-latency blockchain experience. The development of Blinks requires the support of Web2 applications, which brings issues of trust, compatibility, and collaboration between Web2 and Web3. Compared to Farcaster and Lens Protocol, Actions and Blinks rely more on Web2 applications to obtain traffic, while the latter relies more on on-chain security.

1. The working principle of Actions and Blinks

1) Actions (Solana Actions)

According to the official definition: Solana Actions is the standardized API that returns Solana Block on-chain transactions. These transactions can be previewed, signed, and sent in various environments, including QR codes, buttons + widgets, and websites on the Internet.

Actions can be simply understood as transactions waiting for signature. Further expanding, Actions is an abstract description of the transaction processing mechanism in the Solana network, covering various tasks such as transaction processing, contract execution, and data operations. Users can send transactions through Actions, including Token transfers and purchasing digital assets. Developers use Actions to call and execute Smart Contracts, implementing complex on-chain logic.

Solana processes these tasks through ‘Transactions’, each Transaction consists of a series of instructions executed between specific accounts. By parallel processing and the Gulf Stream protocol, Solana forwards transactions to validators in advance, reducing confirmation latency. Through fine-grained locking mechanisms, Solana can simultaneously handle a large number of non-conflicting transactions, greatly improving system throughput. Solana uses Runtime to execute transactions and Smart Contract instructions, ensuring the correctness of transaction inputs, outputs, and state during execution.

After the initial execution, the transaction waits for Block confirmation. Once the majority of validators agree on a Block, the transaction is considered final. Solana can process thousands of transactions per second, with confirmation times as low as 400 milliseconds. Thanks to the Pipeline and Gulf Stream mechanisms, the network’s throughput and performance have been further improved.

Actions are not just tasks or operations, they can be transactions, contract executions, or data processing. These operations are similar to transactions or contract calls in other blockchains, but Solana’s Actions have unique advantages:

Efficient Processing: Solana has designed an efficient method to process Actions, enabling them to be executed quickly in a large-scale network.

Low latency: Solana’s high-performance architecture ensures that the processing latency of Actions is very low, supporting high-frequency transactions and applications.

Flexibility: Actions can perform various complex operations, including Smart Contract invocations and data storage/retrieval (for more detailed information, please refer to the extended link).

2) Blinks (Block Chain Link)

According to the official definition: Blinks can turn any Solana Action into a shareable link rich in metadata. Blinks enables client support for Actions (browser extension Wallet, bot) to display more features to users. On websites, Blinks can trigger transaction previews in Wallet immediately without redirecting to Decentralization applications; on Discord, bots can expand Blinks into a set of interactive buttons. This enables any web interface displaying URLs to achieve on-chain interactions.

In simple terms, Solana Blinks converts Solana Actions into shareable links (similar to HTTP). By enabling the relevant features in supported Wallets such as Phantom, Backpack, and Solflare, websites and social media platforms can serve as places for on-chain transactions, allowing any website with a URL to directly initiate Solana transactions.

In short, although Solana Actions and Blinks are permissionless protocols/standards, they still require client applications and wallets to ultimately help users sign transactions, as opposed to intent solvers.

The direct goal of Actions and Blinks is to “HTTP-linkify” Solana’s on-chain operations and parse them into Web2 applications like Twitter.

2. Application of Decentralization Social Protocol on ETH Network

1）Farcaster Protocol

Farcaster is a Decentralization social graph protocol based on Ethereum and Optimism, which enables applications to interconnect through Decentralization technologies such as blockchain, P2P networks, and Distributed Ledger. This allows users to seamlessly migrate and share content across different platforms without relying on a single centralized entity. Its open graph protocol (which automatically extracts link content and injects interactive features from Social Web posts) enables user-shared content to be automatically extracted and transformed into interactive applications.

Decentralization Network: Farcaster relies on the Decentralization Network, avoiding the common single point of failure problem of centralized servers in traditional Social Web. It uses Distributed Ledger technology to ensure the security and transparency of data.

Public Key encryption: Each Farcaster user has a pair of Public Key and Private Key. The Public Key is used to identify the user, while the Private Key is used to sign their operations. This method ensures the privacy and security of user data.

Data Portability: User data is stored in the Decentralization storage system instead of a single server. This allows users to have full control over their data and be able to migrate it between different applications.

Verifiable Identity: Through Public Key encryption technology, Farcaster ensures that the identity of each user is verifiable. Users can prove control over the account by signing transactions.

Decentralization Identifiers (DIDs): Farcaster uses Decentralization Identifiers (DIDs) to identify users and content. DIDs are based on public-key cryptography, with high security and immutability.

Data Consistency: In order to ensure data consistency on the network, Farcaster uses a Consensus Mechanism similar to blockchain (with ‘posts’ as Nodes). This mechanism ensures that all Nodes reach consensus on user data and operations, ensuring data integrity and consistency.

Decentralization application: Farcaster provides a development platform that allows developers to build and deploy Decentralization applications (DApps). These applications can be seamlessly integrated into the Farcaster network, providing users with various functions and services.

Security and Privacy: Farcaster emphasizes the privacy and security of user data. All data transmission and storage are encrypted, and users can choose to make the content public or private.

In the new feature Frames of Farcaster (where different Frames integrate with Farcaster and run independently), users can transform “casts” (similar to posts, including text, images, videos, and links) into interactive applications. These contents are stored in the Decentralization network, ensuring their permanence and immutability. Each post has a unique identifier when published, making it traceable, and verifies user identity through the Decentralization authentication system. As a Decentralization social protocol, Farcaster’s client can seamlessly integrate with Frames.

2) Main Principles

The Farcaster protocol is divided into three main layers: the identity layer, the Data Layer (Hubs), and the Application Layer. Each layer has specific functions and roles.

A. Identity Layer

Function: Responsible for managing and verifying user identities; providing Decentralization identity authentication to ensure the uniqueness and security of user identities. It includes four registries: ID Registry, Fname, Key Registry, and Storage Registry (detailed explanation can be found in reference link 1).

Technical principle: Using Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) based on Public Key encryption technology. Each user has a unique DID to identify and verify their identity. The use of a pair of Public Key and Private Key ensures that only the user himself can control and manage his identity information. The identity layer ensures seamless migration and identity verification between different applications and services.

B.Data Layer — Hubs

Function: Responsible for storing and managing user-generated data, providing a decentralized data storage system to ensure the security, integrity, and accessibility of data.

Technical Principle: Hubs are Decentralization data storage Nodes distributed in the network. Each Hub functions as an independent storage unit responsible for storing and managing a portion of the data. The data is distributed across multiple Hubs and protected using encryption technology. The Data Layer ensures high availability and scalability of the data, allowing users to access and migrate their data at any time.

Application Layer

Function: Provide a platform for developing and deploying Decentralization applications (DApps), supporting various application scenarios such as Social Web, content publishing, and message transmission.

Technical Principles: Developers can use the APIs and tools provided by Farcaster to build and deploy Decentralization applications. The Application Layer seamlessly integrates with the Identity Layer and Data Layer, ensuring identity verification and data management during application usage. Decentralization applications run on Decentralization networks, without relying on centralized servers, thereby enhancing the reliability and security of the applications.

3) Summary

A.Solana 的 Actions & Blinks

Solana’s Actions and Blinks aim to connect the traffic channels of Web2 applications. Its direct impact is as follows:

User perspective: Simplifies the trading process but increases the risk of funds being stolen.

Solana Perspective: greatly enhances cross-chain flow effects, but faces compatibility and support challenges under the Web2 censorship system.

In Solana’s extensive ecosystem, the future development of Layer2, SVM, and mobile operating systems may further enhance these functionalities.

B. Farcaster protocol for Ethereum

Compared to Solana’s strategy, the Farcaster protocol of Ethereum weakens the integration of Web2 traffic and enhances overall censorship resistance and security. The Farcaster + EVM model is more in line with the native concept of Web3.

4) Lens Protocol

Lens Protocol is another Decentralization social graph protocol, designed to give users full control of their social data and content. Through Lens Protocol, users can create, own, and manage their social graph, and seamlessly migrate between different applications and platforms. The protocol uses Non-fungible Tokens to represent users’ social graph and content, ensuring the uniqueness and security of the data. As a protocol on the ETH network, Lens Protocol has some similarities and differences with Farcaster.

A. Similarities:

User Control: In both protocols, users have complete control over their own data and content.

Identity verification: Both use Decentralization identifiers (DIDs) and encryption technology to ensure the security and uniqueness of user identity.

B. Differences:

Technical Architecture:

Farcaster: Based on Ethereum (L1), it is divided into the identity layer for managing user identities, the data layer (hubs) for decentralized storage nodes, and the application layer for providing DApps development platforms. It uses offline hubs for data dissemination.

Lens Protocol: Based on Polygon (L2), using Non-fungible Tokens to represent users’ social graphs and content, all activities are stored in the user’s Wallet, emphasizing data ownership and portability.

Verification and Data Management:

Farcaster: Use distributed storage nodes (Hubs) to manage data, ensuring security and high availability. Perform handle updates once a year and achieve consensus through delta graph.

Lens Protocol: Personal data profile Non-fungible Token ensures the uniqueness and security of data without the need for updates.

Application Ecosystem:

Farcaster: Provide a comprehensive DApps development platform, seamlessly integrated with its identity and Data Layer.

Lens Protocol: Focuses on the portability of user social graphs and content, supporting seamless switching between different platforms and applications.

Through this comparison, we can see that Farcaster and Lens Protocol have similarities in user control and identity verification, but significant differences in data storage and ecosystem. Farcaster emphasizes layered structure and Decentralization storage, while Lens Protocol highlights the use of NFT to achieve data portability and ownership.

3. Which protocol can achieve large-scale application first?

Through the above analysis, these three protocols each have their own advantages and challenges.

With its high performance and capabilities, Solana transforms any website or app into a Cryptocurrency trading gateway, quickly gaining follow through the use of social media platforms and Blinks. However, its reliance on the characteristics of Web2 brings a trade-off between traffic and security.

Established in 2022, Lens Protocol utilizes its modular design and on-chain storage to provide scalability and transparency, capturing early market opportunities but potentially facing challenges of cost, scalability, and market fear of missing out (FOMO) sentiment.

The advantage of Farcaster lies in its design that is closest to the Web3 principles, providing the highest level of Decentralization. However, this also brings challenges in terms of technical iteration and user management.