Jupiter, the DEX aggregator project, is among the first to implement the new Solana technology for blockchain links or Blinks. The new, cheaper computation and status on the Solana network mean any link can generate an activity on the blockchain.
After Solana introduced Blinks, it achieved the long-term goal of Web3, to offer blockchain services at the speed of normal Internet. Jupiter immediately found a use case, with personal links that would allow swaps.
The technology is still new, and immediately faced skepticism that it was introducing “drainer links” and opening the door to scams. The usage of Blinks still requires a connected Solana wallet.
One of the first Blinks to be offered was a staking feature by Helius Lab. New use cases are still proposed for Blinks, which can be used for microtransactions, staking, voting and DEX swaps.
Blinks are still an experimental feature
Generating a Blink is still one of Solana’s experimental features. Some of the first Blinks also come from development projects. The community is now proposing ideas for automated Blinks that can be created on social media. The Phantom wallet is still required, though the action itself can be performed without leaving the social media tweet.
Blinks can include a specific action, usually tailored for a specific social media marketing approach.
Currently, the Blink options are limited, and mostly allow onboarding with SOL tokens. Some NFT buying Blinks have also appeared.
The Blink experience offers a template to buy or sell SOL, stablecoins, or tokens. Essentially, Blinks create a new action page, redirecting to a service page. On the side of developers, it still takes some time and thinking to point to the exact action that will happen on the blockchain.
The actions of each Blink are still limited and immediately visible to the end user. Blinks eliminate the need to build and host a website, when there is a need for small-scale sales, marketing, or personal transactions.
Blinks has the potential to become a marketing tool, suitable for X.com sales. NFT projects and meme communities can use this tool for retail onboarding, by crafting special offers or predetermined sales links. Jupiter DEX recently advertised the approach as a way to popularize token projects.
In the initial days after the launch of Blinks, there are still no signs of spoofing or malicious transactions. To use a Blink, users must have the feature enabled from the Experimental features section in their wallets. After that, the exact actions coded into the Blink will be visible for preview.
Blinks offer just a small preview of the capabilities of Solana. For more complex swaps or custom activities, users may still prefer to use a wallet. The big advantage is that a Blink is harder to spoof.
One of the risks for Solana Blinks is that the network carries multiple meme tokens, some of which are hard to differentiate. A Blink trying to onboard users may end up selling low-value copies of tokens or NFT.
Jupiter DEX deals with the slippage problem
While DEX are highly convenient and permissionless, the big problem of Solana-based trading is price slippage. Additionally, the Solana network is still hosting overwhelming bot traffic, with MEV bots that can also frontrun transactions.
Jupiter DEX aims to make trading fairer, by introducing the dynamic slippage feature.
Dynamic feature aims to gather data with enough speed and prevent users from committing to swaps that can be exposed to “sandwich attacks”. The Solana network tries to prevent those attacks, but there are still bots that can exploit the list of pending transactions.
Additionally, Jupiter introduced a Master Token List, which is directly routed to Raydium and other Solana-based DEX. The list aims to offer traders an additional layer of safety and information on copied or risky tokens.
Jupiter remains the sixth-largest DEX on Solana, adding around $400M new inflows. The Solana ecosystem expanded to $4.12B in value locked.
