Original | Odaily Planet Daily (
@OdailyChina
)
Author | Nan Zhi (
@Assassin_Malvo
)
Last week, Solana teamed up with Dialect to launch the new feature Blinks. Some view it as a groundbreaking addition for Solana, while others argue it may lead to more fraud. The discussions on how to utilize this feature, integrate it with platforms like X, and explore its full potential are ongoing. This article by Odaily explores the practical applications of Blinks.
Exploring Underlying Logic
Where does it play a role?
This section focuses solely on X platform (Twitter). As a social network, X is where a minority of users post project information (such as basic project data, updates, etc.) and opinions (like research reports, trading calls), while most users consume information and opinions.
In terms of content characteristics, it offers:
– High immediacy: Users see the latest information in their feeds, occasionally prompted by replies from followed users to earlier information.
– Strong virality: Using incentivized sharing, projects can achieve widespread dissemination, second only to instant messaging apps and short video platforms.
– Moderate personalization: Users select whom to follow, and while X has started using content recommendation algorithms, user-generated content from selected follows remains predominant.
Crypto users’ actions can be summarized as “collecting information in real-time information flows, sourced from personal interests or viral information, as a basis for short or long-term investment decisions.” Therefore, the author believes “immediacy” and “facilitating the purchase of valuable information” are the true battlegrounds for Blinks.
“Immediacy” refers to Blinks being the quickest in terms of operations when users view information. “Facilitating the purchase of valuable information” refers to making readers feel “I need this information,” thereby using Blinks to shorten their consideration and transaction time to encourage purchases.
Where does it come into play?
If simplifying a product’s sales into reaching new users, converting new users, and reactivating/renewing old users, where does Blinks become effective?
Reaching new users: Whether through self-promotion, advertising, or virality, these do not fall under Blinks’ direct functions. Although Meteora and Raydium have integrated rebate functions for Blinks to enhance publishing incentives, issues like security and insufficient information suggest this module should still be part of the platform Blinks attaches to. Choosing a platform with a sufficient user base is the primary key.
Converting new users: Why has shopping on short video platforms become popular? Minimizing the purchase process after reaching users’ mindsets is crucial. After reaching target users and making them discover a feature they need, Blinks directly prompting wallet payments can effectively increase conversion rates, which potential cases will elaborate on in the next section.
Reactivating old users: X platform’s personalized follows combined with long-term engagement possibilities can effectively reactivate previous users, playing a role in small-scale expenditures or non-paid scenarios.
Exploring Potential Use Cases
Segmenting Crypto users’ actions into profit-seeking investments, consumption, and others, the former two involve broader scopes. Governance within communities, decentralized social interactions, blockchain games, etc., typically operate through proprietary platforms without involving X; thus, these are not discussed here.
Profit-seeking investments
In these scenarios, users require either rapid information or significant depth, where deeper information often involves large investments. It’s challenging to trust a direct payment link without sufficient due diligence, ruling out one option first. Rapid information requirements typically correspond to early meme tokens. Under what circumstances are users willing or daring to purchase? One scenario is when the information source has sufficient credibility, and the other is when the story has significant speculative potential, presenting users with opportunities for high rewards.
BOME and SLERF in March exemplify these two types:
Darkfarms, as an artist with a history of projects, can effectively attract users to participate in donations or purchases through Blinks. Similarly credible individuals or organizations can use Blinks to promote conversions. SLERF corresponds to speculative narrative conversions. Despite its obscurity, when bombarded with high-frequency events in X platform’s real-time information flow, a direct, rapid investment pathway is precisely what users need.
However, whether from highly credible information sources or unconventional narratives, the proportion is relatively small, and the higher the investment amount, the lower the conversion rate achievable. Therefore, Blinks’ average effectiveness in such scenarios is not high.
Consumption
The author believes consumption is where Blinks can be widely applied. Personalized recommendations filter user groups, ensuring a potential buyer base. Aligning with content can “penetrate user mindsets,” converting from “clicking the little yellow bike below the video” to “clicking Blinks below the article to make a purchase.” Especially in value-added services, inducive purchases, and small-scale consumption, examples include:
Value-added services: After Odaily publishes an article on “Next Week’s Token Unlock Inventory,” clicking Blinks below to purchase advanced analysis like “Review of XX Token’s Unlock Data from the last 20 times: Will it air out or dump in advance?”
Inducive purchases: After rigorous calculations using trading methods like Ichimoku, Elliott Wave, and Fibonacci, I found a brilliant bottoming point. Click Blinks below to purchase the winning strategy.
Small-scale consumption: Quick bets on whether Trump or Biden will be elected president, or when an artist releases a Blinks Mint link, etc.
When a project provides valuable information in this format to users, due to X platform’s repeat reach capabilities, the next appearance of Blinks for the same project can effectively reactivate old users and payments.
Community Perspective
@thesendcoin has posted a series of community fantasies about Blinks on X platform. This section showcases valuable or, in the author’s view, more negatively impactful ideas about Blinks.
Practical
Market prediction
Airdrop checker
Paid chats (Superchats)
Community traffic and conversion
Paid content acquisition
NFT advanced operations
Negative
Multi-sign private messages requiring multi-party identity verification and still ensuring link accuracy, with limited significance.
Private message sales; the current market has minimal demand for NFT standalone premium sales.
Destruction (of useless) NFTs and tokens involve too many tokens, raising doubts about whether valuable tokens will also be affected.
