News
Solana adds “Flashes” and “Stocks” so users can trade cryptocurrencies on their favorite social apps
The Solana blockchain has been at the epicenter of the latest cryptocurrency “meme coin” frenzy and a new set of features for the chain, so-called Actions and flashes – could help make meme coins and other buzzy blockchain trends accessible to a wider audience.
Developed by the Solana Foundation in collaboration with development shop Solana Dialect, Blinks and Actions allows people to transact on blockchain directly from the websites and social platforms they use every day.
“Solana Actions allows users to execute on-chain transactions across various platforms, including websites, social media, and physical QR codes,” the Solana Foundation explained in a statement to CoinDesk. “The actions make it easy for developers to integrate everything you can do in the Solana ecosystem directly into their applications.”
The technology will be supported by popular Solana wallets such as Ghost AND Backpack right away and other platforms will be able to integrate it by following the implementation instructions in the chain’s developer documents.
Meme coin traders buy and sell digital assets modeled after everything from old-school Internet memes to political figures. Solana has been the biggest hub for meme coins lately, serving as a home for assets like viral Australian rapper Iggy Azalea Mother’s sign ($MOTHER), which has a market cap of $70 million less than a month after its launch in June, and dogwifhat ($WIF), the breakout star of the 2024 meme coin craze, which boasts a market value exceeding 2 billion dollars.
While meme coins have plenty of naysayers (trading meme coins sometimes feels more like gambling than investing), some cryptocurrency advocates think the hype around them could help bring blockchains further into the mainstream.
But for blockchains to become ubiquitous, the technology behind them is in desperate need of an upgrade. Complicated wallet software and difficult-to-navigate trading platforms continue to make entry into meme coin trading and cryptocurrency trading in general difficult for newcomers.
This is where Solana’s new features come into play.
“Stocks and blinks on Solana enable any website and application on the Internet to be a distribution point for on-chain interactions, furthering the goal of mainstream adoption,” said Jon Wong, head of ecosystem engineering of the Solana Foundation.
For example, a person might embed an “action” in post X that references a particular memecoin. Users who see the post can click on it and immediately initiate a transaction on Solana, adding the token to their blockchain wallet. Users can also use “blinks” (a portmanteau of “blockchain” and “link”) to share other users’ actions with their followers.
“From your X feed, you can buy an NFT, tip a creator, get money, vote, bet, trade and so much more.” says Chris Osborn, founder of Dialect.
Accessibility has long been blockchain’s Achilles’ heel, and Solana’s new features follow similar moves from other ecosystems.
Blinks and Actions share a close resemblance to, for example, Farcaster, the X-like social platform on Coinbase’s Base blockchain. Farcaster users can easily embed direct links to blockchain assets into their posts and specialized Fascaster customers like Kiosk – an emerging utility from the makers of the Web3 Mirror publishing platform – that makes blink-and-you’ll-miss-it calls to action a key selling point.
Farcaster, Kiosk and Solana are all clearly motivated by the fact that social media platforms are at the forefront of crypto culture, where users go to exchange memes, news and trading opportunities. Solana’s technology differs in that it connects blockchain functionality to existing Web2 social apps rather than new standalone Web3 apps.
“It makes a lot of sense in a social media feed,” Osborn told CoinDesk, but the Dialect founder hopes Actions can eventually revolutionize how the web itself works.
“Getting these Actions into feeds like X, Reddit, and maybe Discord early — these other platforms where people want to have these Actions experiences — is just the beginning,” Osborn said. “What really excites me is: What is the true non-skeuomorphic Internet equivalent of ‘Web3’? We don’t know what it is, but I think this idea of action is what’s at its core.”