SOL Blog

Inspiration

When building apps in Web3, specifically Solana, I realized there aren't a lot of great reference apps out there to learn from. There also aren't many easy ways to push, follow, and update data on Web3 either. I also kept looking for this thing called "Crypto Twitter" but then just realized that it was just regular Twitter but talking about Crypto.... So I combined these ideas into both a fully working 1) app, with a 2) tutorial and 3) video on how to build it all. Plus we get REAL Crypto Twitter as a bonus.

What it does

SolBlog lets you post weblogs to Web3. Give others your SolBlog link, or your Solana Name Service Twitter handle, and they'll get your most recent stream of visionary posts or data. The link looks like https://syncs.info/blogger/DougAnderson444 and points to your SolBlog feed on Solana.

How we built it

Anchor was used to build the Solana program, with a Svelte front-end. The Bonfida Naming service was used to link in those who have registered their Twitter names to Solana Naming Service.

Challenges we ran into

Had to rebuild parts of the Twitter Name Service as the hash libraries they used didn't work in the browser. Had to use Nodejs Buffers instead of UInt8Arrays in the browser for Anchor. Also had to build a mini-Anchor SDK for the client, and mini-Deploy SDK for Nodejs, but nothing too overwhelming.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Markdown and Bonfida/Twitter integration, yeah for easy names!!

Also super proud of the vanity program id, BLoG9PtBTkhUbGRAYVe8jzd5ji1G2VPkzwbsRV3bnteD

What we learned

Sometimes you've got big visions for hackathons, but in the end you need to be ok with not quite getting everything you wanted built. Save some for the next hackathon ;)

Also, leave yourself the last week to work on making a cool video :)

What's next for SolBlog

Oh man, there's so much more left to do. Native IPFS & Arweave integration for longer posts and more complex data structures, Blogger tokenization, "follow"/aggregation mechanism, syndicate SolBLog posts out to Twitter via API, and encrypted posts would be great, better wallet integration, and add email links as registration.