CoinPost Report:
Author: YB; Translation: Plain Blockchain
Recently, Solana and Dialect jointly launched the new Solana concept “Actions and Blinks,” enabling one-click operations through browser extensions for functions like exchange, voting, donations, and minting. Actions simplify the execution of various operations and transactions, while Blinks ensure network consensus and consistency through time synchronization and sequential recording. Together, they enable Solana to offer a high-performance, low-latency blockchain experience. The development of Blinks requires support from Web2 applications, posing challenges related to trust, compatibility, and Web2/Web3 cooperation. Compared to Farcaster and Lens Protocol, Actions and Blinks rely more on Web2 applications for traffic, while the latter depends more on on-chain security.
1. Operation Principles of Actions and Blinks
1) Actions (Solana Actions)
According to the official definition: Solana Actions are standardized APIs for transactions on the Solana blockchain. These transactions can be previewed, signed, and sent in various environments, including QR codes, buttons+widgets, and websites on the internet.
Actions can be understood simply as transactions awaiting signature. Furthermore, Actions abstractly describe transaction processing mechanisms within the Solana network, covering tasks such as transaction processing, contract execution, and data operations. Users can send transactions via Actions, including token transfers and digital asset purchases. Developers use Actions to call and execute smart contracts, implementing complex on-chain logic.
Solana processes these tasks through “Transactions,” each composed of a series of instructions executed between specific accounts. Utilizing parallel processing and the Gulf Stream protocol, Solana forwards transactions to validators in advance, reducing confirmation delays. With fine-grained locking mechanisms, Solana can simultaneously process a large number of conflict-free transactions, significantly increasing system throughput. Solana employs Runtime to execute transaction and smart contract instructions, ensuring the correctness of transaction inputs, outputs, and states during execution.
After initial execution, transactions await block confirmation. Once a majority of validators agree on a block, transactions are 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, network throughput and performance are further enhanced.
Actions are not just tasks or operations; they can be transactions, contract executions, or data processing. These operations resemble transactions or contract calls in other blockchains, but Solana’s Actions offer unique advantages:
Efficient Processing: Solana designs an efficient method to process Actions, ensuring fast execution in large-scale networks.
Low Latency: Solana’s high-performance architecture ensures Actions have very low processing latency, supporting high-frequency trading and applications.
Flexibility: Actions can execute various complex operations, including smart contract calls and data storage/retrieval (for more detailed information, refer to the extension link).
2) Blinks (Blockchain Links)
According to the official definition: Blinks can transform any Solana Action into a shareable link enriched with metadata. Blinks enable clients supporting Actions (browser extension wallets, bots) to showcase more functionalities to users. On websites, Blinks can trigger transaction previews directly in wallets without redirecting to decentralized applications; on Discord, bots can expand Blinks into a set of interactive buttons. This allows any webpage interface displaying URLs to facilitate on-chain interaction.
In short, Solana Blinks transform Solana Actions into shareable links (similar to HTTP). By enabling related functionalities in supported wallets (such as Phantom, Backpack, and Solflare), websites and social media become venues for on-chain transactions, allowing any webpage with a URL to initiate Solana transactions.
In conclusion, although Solana Actions and Blinks are permissionless protocols/standards, they still require client applications and wallets to assist users in signing transactions, compared to intent narrative solvers.
The direct goal of Actions and Blinks is to “HTTP link” Solana’s on-chain operations, parsing them to Web2 applications such as Twitter.
2. Applications of Decentralized Social Protocols on Ethereum
1) Farcaster Protocol
Farcaster is a decentralized social graph protocol based on Ethereum and Optimism, enabling applications to interconnect through decentralized technologies like blockchains, P2P networks, and distributed ledgers. This allows users to seamlessly migrate and share content across different platforms without relying on a single centralized entity. Its open graph protocol (automatically extracting and injecting interactive features from social network posts) enables shared content to be automatically extracted and converted into interactive applications.
Decentralized Network: Farcaster relies on a decentralized network, avoiding the single point of failure issues common in traditional social networks’ centralized servers. It uses distributed ledger technology to ensure the security and transparency of data.
Public Key Encryption: Each Farcaster user has a pair of public and private keys. Public keys identify users, while private keys sign their operations. This approach ensures the privacy and security of user data.
Data Portability: User data is stored in decentralized storage systems rather than on a single server. This allows users full control over their data and the ability to migrate it between different applications.
Verifiable Identity: Using public key encryption technology, Farcaster ensures each user’s identity is verifiable. Users can prove ownership of their accounts by signing operations.
Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs): Farcaster uses Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) to identify users and content. DIDs are based on public key encryption, offering high security and immutability.
Data Consistency: To ensure data consistency across the network, Farcaster uses a consensus mechanism similar to blockchain (using “posts” as nodes). This mechanism ensures all nodes agree on user data and operations, maintaining data integrity and consistency.
Decentralized Applications: Farcaster provides a development platform allowing developers to build and deploy decentralized applications (DApps). These applications can seamlessly integrate into the Farcaster network, offering users various functionalities 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 content public or private.
In Farcaster’s new feature Frames (different Frames integrate with Farcaster and operate independently), users can transform “casts” (similar to posts, including text, images, videos, and links) into interactive applications. This content is stored in decentralized networks, ensuring its permanence and immutability. Each post has a unique identifier upon publication, making it traceable and verifying user identities through a decentralized authentication system. As a decentralized social protocol, Farcaster’s client seamlessly integrates with Frames.
2) Key Principles
The Farcaster protocol is divided into three main layers: identity layer, data layer (Hubs), and application layer. Each layer has specific functions and roles.
A. Identity Layer
Function: Responsible for managing and verifying user identities; provides decentralized identity authentication to ensure the uniqueness and security of user identities. Includes four registries: ID Registry, Fname, Key Registry, and Storage Registry (see detailed explanation in Reference Link 1).
Technical Principle: Uses Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) based on public key encryption technology. Each user has a unique DID for identification and verification of their identity. The use of public and private key pairs ensures only the user can control and manage their identity information. The identity layer ensures seamless migration and authentication of identities 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 decentralized data storage nodes distributed across the network. Each Hub acts as an independent storage unit responsible for storing and managing a portion of the data. Data is distributed across various Hubs and protected using encryption technology. The data layer ensures high availability and scalability of data, allowing users to access and migrate their data at any time.
C. Application Layer
Function: Provides a platform for developing and deploying decentralized applications (DApps), supporting various application scenarios such as social networks, content publishing, and messaging.
Technical Principle: Developers can use APIs and tools provided by Farcaster to build and deploy decentralized applications. The application layer seamlessly integrates with the identity and data layers to ensure identity verification and data management during application use. Decentralized applications run on decentralized networks without relying on centralized servers, enhancing application reliability and security.
3) Summary
A. Solana’s Actions & Blinks
Solana’s Actions and Blinks aim to connect traffic channels of Web2 applications. Their direct impacts are as follows:
User Perspective: Simplify transaction processes but increase the risk of fund theft.
Solana Perspective: Greatly enhance cross-border traffic effects but face compatibility and support challenges under Web2’s censorship regime.
In Solana’s extensive ecosystem, future developments such as Layer2, SVM, and mobile operating systems may further enhance these functionalities.
B. Ethereum’s Farcaster Protocol
Compared to Solana’s approach, Ethereum’s Farcaster protocol weakens Web2 traffic integration, enhancing overall censorship resistance and security. The Farcaster + EVM model aligns more closely with native Web3 concepts.
4) Lens Protocol
Lens Protocol is another decentralized social graph protocol aiming to give users full control over their social data and content. Through Lens Protocol, users can create, own, and manage their social graphs across different applications and platforms. The protocol uses NFTs to represent users’ social graphs and content, ensuring data uniqueness and security. As an Ethereum-based protocol, Lens Protocol shares similarities and differences with Farcaster:
A. Similarities:
User Control: In both protocols, users have complete control over their data and content.
Identity Verification: Both use Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and encryption technology to ensure the security and uniqueness of user identities.
B. Differences:
Technical Architecture:
Farcaster: Based on Ethereum (L1), divided into an identity layer managing user identities, a data layer (Hubs) for decentralized storage nodes, and an
