In the past year, Solana ecosystem projects have provided participants with numerous early opportunities, such as multiple token airdrops for users, the explosion of the DePIN sector, the rise of the AI sector, and the popularity of MEME tokens. Recently, news has emerged about several prominent institutions applying for a Solana ETF. In addition to its own development, the Solana ecosystem continues to innovate.
If we were to discuss what concept on Solana is currently worth the most attention, Blinks is definitely one that cannot be ignored. We mentioned the introduction and future prospects of Blinks in a previous article:
https://www.wikibit.com/en/202406282084107288.html
In short, Blinks is not an application but a tool that allows developers to simplify transaction operations and embed them into Web2 social media. It is not a use case itself. Blinks leaves the question of “what exactly it will be used for” to the community and developers to explore.
Blinks appeared three weeks ago without any phenomenal applications building upon it, and it fell into silence. That was until Solana founder Toly retweeted and pinned a project called SEND.
SEND's Timeline of Explosion
SEND's explosion in popularity was not just due to Solana's founder retweeting and pinning its tweet. Reviewing the content posted by its X account, it is hard not to speculate whether its team has close ties with Solana or the Blinks team.
Blinks' official release date was June 24, while Solana officially announced Blinks on June 25. Before this, SEND had been hyping up that Solana would make a big move, and it frequently retweeted other KOLs' previews of Solana ecosystem actions.
In the following days, SEND seemed fully prepared, releasing over 50 use cases that could be done with Blinks.
Later, SEND released over 100 use cases that could be done with Blinks and was retweeted and pinned by Toly, gaining widespread attention.
Solana founder's retweet, combined with SEND's previews of the project before Blinks' release, made it hard not to believe that SEND might have some connection with the Solana official team.
NFT and Token Release
On July 3, SEND launched an NFT minting event called “Send it,” with a total supply of 100,000 NFTs. Users could mint for free, and each NFT was a lottery ticket with a chance to win 6.9 SOL. To show support for Blinks, Send it was released in the form of Blinks. After turning on the Solana Actions on “X” setting in the Phantom wallet, users could mint directly on the “X” platform page.
After Toly retweeted and pinned SEND's tweet, people began to realize the project's potential, and the price of Send it rose to as high as 0.5 SOL. Of course, this included the expectation that SEND would issue tokens in the future and that holding Send it would earn airdrops.
As expected, on July 13, SEND announced the upcoming release of its token, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. The initial circulating supply was 50%, coming from LP, early supporters, and airdrops. The other 50% (core contributors and treasury) will be released linearly over three years starting August 1, 2024. Before the TGE, SEND conducted a token subscription with a vault cap of 999 SOL. At the subscription price, the FDV was $500,000. In the end, over 720k SOL participated.
However, both $SEND and the NFT Send it saw high initial prices that quickly dropped. The $SEND price dropped over 85% within 24 hours, with the current FDV around $10 million, and Send it fell from a high of 0.5 SOL to 0.068 SOL.
From a price perspective alone, SEND has been very unsuccessful. The reasons for its failure include not running a business compared to VC projects, and its tokenomics failing to satisfy the community, making it appear awkward and out of place compared to MEME tokens.