Solana and Dialect have recently launched a new Solana concept called “Actions and Blinks” 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. Together, they enable 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. In comparison 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. Working Principles of Actions and Blinks
1) Actions (Solana Actions)
According to the official definition, Solana Actions are standardized APIs that return 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 as transactions awaiting signature. Furthermore, Actions are an abstract description of transaction processing mechanisms 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 handles these tasks through “Transactions”, which consist of a series of instructions executed between specific accounts. By forwarding transactions to validators in advance through parallel processing and the Gulf Stream protocol, Solana reduces confirmation delays. With fine-grained locking mechanisms, Solana can process a large number of non-conflicting transactions simultaneously, greatly improving system throughput. Solana uses Runtime to execute transaction and smart contract instructions, ensuring the correctness of transaction inputs, outputs, and states during execution.
After initial execution, transactions wait for block confirmation. Once a 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, network throughput and performance are further enhanced.
Actions are not limited to tasks or operations; they can be transactions, contract executions, or data processing. These operations are similar to transactions or contract invocations in other blockchains, but Solana’s Actions have unique advantages:
– Efficient processing: Solana has designed an efficient method to handle Actions, enabling fast execution in a large-scale network.
– Low latency: Solana’s high-performance architecture ensures very low processing latency for Actions, 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 expansion link).
2) Blinks (Blockchain Links)
According to the official definition, Blinks can transform any Solana Action into a shareable link with rich metadata. Blinks enable clients supporting Actions (browser extension wallets, bots) to showcase more features to users. On websites, Blinks can trigger transaction previews in wallets immediately without redirecting to decentralized applications. In Discord, bots can extend Blinks into a set of interactive buttons. This allows any web interface displaying URLs to achieve on-chain interactions.
In simple terms, Solana Blinks transform Solana Actions into shareable links (similar to HTTP). By enabling relevant functionalities in supported wallets such as Phantom, Backpack, and Solflare, websites and social media platforms can become places for on-chain transactions, enabling any website with a URL to directly initiate Solana transactions.
In conclusion, although Solana Actions and Blinks are permissionless protocols/standards, they still require client applications and wallets to ultimately help users sign transactions, compared to intent resolution solvers.
The direct goal of Actions and Blinks is to “HTTP-linkify” Solana’s on-chain operations, parsing them into Web2 applications like Twitter.
2. Applications of Decentralized Social Protocols on Ethereum
1) Farcaster Protocol
Farcaster is a decentralized social graph protocol based on Ethereum and Optimism, allowing applications to interconnect through decentralized technologies such as blockchain, P2P networks, and distributed ledgers. This enables users to seamlessly migrate and share content between different platforms without relying on a single centralized entity. Its open graph protocol automatically extracts and injects interactive features into shared content from social network posts.
Decentralized network: Farcaster relies on a decentralized network, avoiding the single point of failure issue common in traditional social networks’ centralized servers. It uses distributed ledger technology to ensure data security and transparency.
Public key encryption: Each Farcaster user has a pair of public and private keys. The public key is used to identify the user, while the private key is used to sign their operations. This approach ensures the privacy and security of user data.
Data portability: User data is stored in decentralized storage systems instead of a single server. This allows users to have full control over their own data and enables migration between different applications.
Verifiable identity: Through public key encryption technology, Farcaster ensures the verifiability of each user’s identity. Users can prove control over 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 and have high security and immutability.
Data consistency: 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 agree on user data and operations, maintaining data integrity and consistency.
Decentralized applications: Farcaster provides a development platform that allows developers to build and deploy decentralized applications (DApps). These applications can seamlessly integrate into the Farcaster network, providing users with various functionalities and services.
Security and privacy: Farcaster emphasizes the privacy and security of user data. All data transmissions and storage are encrypted, and users can choose to make content public or private.
In Farcaster’s new feature, Frames (which integrates Farcaster and runs independently), users can turn “casts” (similar to posts, including text, images, videos, and links) into interactive applications. These contents are stored in a decentralized network, ensuring their permanence and immutability. Each post has a unique identifier when published, making it traceable and verifying user identity through a decentralized authentication system. As a decentralized social protocol, Farcaster’s clients can seamlessly integrate with Frames.
2) Key Principles
Farcaster Protocol is divided into three main layers: the Identity Layer, Data Layer (Hubs), and Application Layer. Each layer has specific functionalities and roles.
A. Identity Layer
Functionality: Responsible for managing and verifying user identities; provides decentralized identity authentication to ensure the uniqueness and security of user identities. It includes four registries: ID Registry, Fname, Key Registry, and Storage Registry (detailed explanations can be found in reference link 1).
Technical principles: 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 key pairs (public and private keys) ensures that only the user can control and manage their identity information. The Identity Layer enables seamless migration and identity verification between different applications and services.
B. Data Layer – Hubs
Functionality: Responsible for storing and managing user-generated data, providing a decentralized data storage system to ensure data security, integrity, and accessibility.
Technical principles: Hubs are decentralized data storage nodes distributed in the network. Each Hub serves as an independent storage unit responsible for storing and managing a portion of data. Data is distributed across multiple Hubs and protected through encryption. The Data Layer ensures high availability and scalability of data, enabling users to access and migrate their data at any time.
C. Application Layer
Functionality: Provides a platform for developing and deploying decentralized applications (DApps), supporting various application scenarios such as social networks, content publishing, and messaging.
Technical principles: Developers can use the APIs and tools provided by Farcaster to build and deploy decentralized applications. The Application Layer seamlessly integrates with the Identity Layer and Data Layer, ensuring identity verification and data management during application usage. Decentralized applications run on a decentralized network, independent of 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 the transaction process but increase the risk of fund theft.
– Solana perspective: Significantly enhance cross-border traffic effects, but face challenges of compatibility and support under Web2’s censorship system.
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 strategy, Ethereum’s Farcaster Protocol weakens the integration of Web2 traffic, enhancing overall resistance to censorship and security. The Farcaster + EVM model aligns more closely with the native concepts of Web3.
4) Lens Protocol
Lens Protocol is another decentralized social graph protocol that allows users to have full control over 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 NFTs to represent users’ social graphs and content, ensuring data uniqueness and security. As an Ethereum-based protocol, Lens Protocol has some similarities and differences compared to 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 the Identity Layer for managing user identities, the Data Layer (Hubs) for decentralized storage nodes, and the Application Layer for DApps development platform, using offline Hubs for data propagation.
– Lens Protocol: Based on Polygon (L2), uses NFTs to represent users’ social graphs and content, with all activities stored in users’ wallets, emphasizing data ownership and portability.
– Verification and data management:
– Farcaster: Manages data using distributed storage nodes (Hubs) to ensure security and high availability, with annual handle updates and consensus achieved through delta graphs.
– Lens Protocol: Ensures data uniqueness and security through personal data profile NFTs, without the need for updates.
– Application ecosystem:
– Farcaster: Provides a comprehensive DApps development platform seamlessly integrated with its Identity and Data Layers.
– Lens Protocol: Focuses on 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 share similarities in user control and identity verification but have significant differences in data storage and ecosystem. Farcaster emphasizes a layered structure and decentralized storage, while Lens Protocol highlights the use of NFTs for data portability and ownership.
3. Which Protocol Can Achieve Mass Adoption First?
Based on the analysis above, these three protocols have their advantages and challenges.
Solana, with its high performance and capabilities, has transformed any website or application into a gateway for cryptocurrency transactions and quickly gained attention by leveraging social media platforms and utilizing Blinks. However, its reliance on Web2 characteristics brings a trade-off between traffic and security.
Established in 2022, Lens Protocol has captured early market opportunities with its modular design and on-chain storage, providing good scalability and transparency. However, it may face challenges of costs, scalability, and market FOMO sentiment.
Farcaster’s strength lies in its design being closest to Web3 principles, providing the highest degree of decentralization. However, this also brings challenges in technical iterations and user management.
