Thread by @SBF_Alameda

1) HUGE UI/UX improvement to Solana:

Send someone an SPL token just using their SOL address!

2) NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE

3) What does this mean?

Well, on Ethereum, say your address is X.

Then you'd send ETH and all ERC20's directly to X.

Solana is different.

4) SPL tokens -- tokens on @solana -- have their own accounts.

So, for instance, if your Solana (SOL) address is Y, and you want to hold $USDC:

First, you create a USDC address Y1 _owned by Y_.

Then you send USDC to Y1.

Wallets (e.g. sollet.io) have GUIs for it.

5) There are pros and cons of this.

Pro: very explicit. It makes it easy to make sure you're sending the right and expected thing to the right place.

Cons: it's a pain to manage.

6) Here are some example painpoints:

A wants to send USDC to B.

They've transacted before -- A knows B's SOL address is X.

But they still have to ask B for their USDC address.

And if B hasn't taken USDC to X before, they have to _create_ a USDC account first.

7) This is true even if you're A and B.

You can't just store your SOL address somewhere and send tokens to it; you need to keep looking up different addresses for different tokens.

8) Anyway -- now this is a lot easier.

You can now enter someone's SOL address to send them SPL tokens!

sollet.io

9) So you just send the USDC to their SOL address.

In the background, _your_ account creates _them_ a USDC account, and then sends the USDC to that.

Their sollet.io will automatically pick up the new account.

explorer.solana.com/tx/bLgkj6ixX3n…

10) So now you can use the flow you're used to: all you need is someone's SOL address and you can send them any SPL token.

And all you need to give someone is your SOL address.

11) This is live now sending from sollet.io

But sollet.io is also open source -- so any Solana wallet can add that code!

And more generally -- any programs (on-chain or not) can use it to simplify the SPL process.

github.com/project-serum/…

12) Another recent UX update:

on dex.projectserum.com, if you auto-accept transactions, the DEX will auto-settle.

(If you don't know what that means, great! It's a button you used to have to click to settle DEX trades.)

13) One annoying thing: right now their SOL account has to have already gotten its first-ever SOL deposit. This will probably be cleaned up in a later push.

Another UX thing that would be great: tiny SOL airdrops for new users to get started. Hopefully someone will do it!

14) h/t @austerity_sucks for pinging us to fix this issue.