Blinks.gg is using a pump.fun token to springboard a developer platform

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A heartfelt thank you to all the Gen-Zers who showed up to defend my subject line choice on social media yesterday. A certain Blockworks co-founder asked me to explain what “skibidi gyatt ohio” is on a Zoom call yesterday, which was definitely not on my 2024 bingo card.

We are not serious people. Anyways:

Solana dev platform blinks.gg spikes on pump.fun

Things were going well for blinks.gg co-founder Amir Banihashem. After spending years working on a Solana developer tool that struggled to gain traction, he appeared to be catching his break. 

Dialect and the Solana Foundation had released an embedded Solana transaction flow for X called blinks, and Banihashem realized his visual programming platform — named Space Operator — could be used to create the blink widgets. 

He uploaded a video of himself creating a Blink with the “no code” builder in under two minutes that drew over 120,000 views. Shortly thereafter, Banihashem listed a blinks.gg token on pump.fun — a move he characterized to me as making the project “community driven.” Banihashem said he owns 2.5% of the token, and blinks.gg has said it will share revenue from the platform with holders of its token and NFTs.

The unusual software go-to-market strategy drew the attention of a developer relations engineer at Solana client developer Anza named Rex St. John, who cast doubt on the project to his more than 100,000 X followers. Banihashem then did a livestream where he used blinks.gg to create a “Rex” NFT collection in an attempt to demonstrate the project’s authenticity. 

Thousands tuned into the live stream, Banihashem said, but the NFT collection crashed after just 16 mints — doing little to prove the project wasn’t a scam. 

“Remember this is version 0.2,” a confused-looking Banihashem said on the stream. “It’s just a fucking baby.”

St. John and blinks.gg have since settled the misunderstanding, and blinks.gg’s pump.fun-based GTM strategy appears to be gathering steam. The token’s price has climbed over 100% in the past 24 hours with nearly $2 million in trading volume, according to DEX Screener. Its Telegram chat has added 500 users over the past couple of days, according to a channel admin.

Is the community there for a novel software platform or only to make a quick buck? Time will tell.

Space Operator was meant to be a Solana equivalent for a visual design software popular with architects called Grasshopper (Banihashem has an architecture degree and previously founded an apartment rental startup in Boston). Despite a Solana Foundation grant and years of work for an idea hatched in 2021, Space Operator’s learning curve was just a bit too steep, and it never took off, Banihashem told me.

Now, with a pump.fun token and the simplicity of Blinks, blinks.gg already has six times the number of X followers as Space Operator.

In our interview, Banihashem didn’t seem to have a super firm idea where blinks.gg would go. 

“We’re just going one step at a time,” he concluded when I asked him how the platform would make money. 

He seemed more enamored with the kinds of new possibilities his platform could create. Banihashem likened Space Operator to lego blocks that let token or NFT creators build without the guidelines that launchpads require. He added that there is still some work to be done in making Solana’s global computer as easy to access as a personal computer. What if creators could sync files to Solana as easily as they can upload files to Google Drive, for instance?

Blinks.gg’s team of three developers now has a lot of hype for a platform that still has some warts. It will be interesting to watch whether the pump.fun go to market will prove to be prescient or ill-advised.

— Jack Kubinec

Zero In

Just a few days after launch, Drift’s new Bet prediction market is having a huge volume day: 

More than $20 million has been bet on Bet today, which bests Polymarket, according to a Dune dashboard. It’s unclear what exactly drove the volume spike, and it’s also worth noting that only 630 bets have been placed today — meaning the average bet has been over $30,000. Most of this betting volume appears to have gone to the US presidential election popular vote market. 

That market is boosted for five times the typical amount of Drift loyalty points, called FUEL. 

It’s a notable infusion of liquidity, but Polymarket has still seen ten times the number of bettors today, so I’m not quite ready to hand Bet the prediction market crown. Drift did not return a request for comment on where the betting volume came from by press time.

— Jack Kubinec

The Pulse

If you’re still waiting for Solana Summer, you might want to check your calendar. We’re less than a month away from autumn — starting September 22nd, to be exact — and it’s becoming increasingly clear that this much-hyped “season” has not been the sunshine-filled rally many had hoped for.

As @expensive_io put it, “Solana Summer 2024 transformed $SOL into a stablecoin.” Ouch.

To be fair though, crypto is a weird planet. It never seems to have autumns or springs. It’s either a scorching summer or a freezing winter. Even so, I think it might be time for us to start workshopping a new name for whenever line-go-up.

@TheCryptoGuy210 suggests, “More like Solana Fall.” I get what you’re saying, but no thank you, sire. “Fall” is a bad vibe (unless, of course, we’re planning on falling upwards?) @PuppaCoin suggested, “SOLANA SEPTEMBER MAYBE?” Nice try, Puppa. But you know September is still part of Summer, right? And anyways, just shoot me now if the (alleged, but also definitely going to happen) bull run only lasts one single month.

Jupiter Exchange’s @SolJakey may have had the best idea. He posted, “SOLANA SUMMER was a myth. It’s the SOLANA cycle.” Strong. Only foreseeable problem with that is the potential trademark overlap with the concatenated rave/gym monstrosity known as SoulCycle. Don’t worry though, they’ll never catch us on those stationary bikes.

Maybe the real Solana Summer was the friends we made along the way. Or maybe… it’s still out there, hiding just beyond the horizon. CUE THEME SONG, ROLL CREDITS.

— Jeffrey Albus

One Good DM

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