From Friction to Flow: My Journey with Action Codes

The Problem

Most users never make it onchain.
They get stuck at the same step which is wallet connect.

As a developer, I felt this friction in every project I touched. As a user, I saw friends drop off before even clicking “Sign.”
So I started asking:

What if you could skip wallet connection
and just share an intent?

The Spark Behind Action Codes

Action Codes were born from this idea:

Intent should come first.
Not dApps. Not wallets. Not websites.

We created a protocol where users can:

• Receive a short code like 26632553
• Paste it into any compatible receiver (dApp, wallet, chat app, PoS. etc)
• Instantly see the action → sign → done

No frontend required.
No session. Just action.

Building During Colosseum Breakout Hackathon

I had no team, just a protocol draft, a lot of ideas, and not much sleep.

What followed were 2 weeks of:

• Writing a full open-source protocol specs
• Creating easy to use APIs
• Building a checkout demo with universal code resolution
• Prototyping Telegram bots
• Integrating with Blink Widgets to show how we make them usable via Action Codes.
• Integrating with wallet adapter infrastructure
• Filming mobile flows at 3AM

And then…

• we got an opportunity to talk with Solana Foundation for grants just two weeks into the progress and got it!

📣 At the end we won 4th place in Infrastructure Track out of over 1,400 projects.

🏆 What That Meant

It wasn’t just validation.
It was momentum.

It proved there’s a real hunger in the Solana ecosystem for:

• Stateless UX
• Shareable onchain actions
• Protocol-first thinking

Since then, we’ve built:

• ota.codes
• docs.ota.codes
• Easy to test playground at docs.ota.codes/playground
• A custom ActionCodesWalletAdapter for existing Solana wallet adapter users
• Example Telegram bot with code-to-sign flows
• A relayer for seamless confirmations

What Comes Next

Action Codes are just the beginning. 🌱🌱

This protocol unlocks:

• Payments via short codes anywhere you can enter a few digits
• Social onchain interactions from a tweet
• DAO votings from chat groups directly in chat apps

Use cases limited by imagination.

I want wallets, devs, creators, and merchants to all build on this primitive. ❤️

Gratitude

Huge thanks to:

• The Solana Foundation and Superteam for believing early
• Colosseum for creating space to build publicly
• The amazing builders I met through this journey

✊ Why I’m Still Here

I believe crypto UX will be won by simplicity – not hype or slogans.
By flows that just work, not more low-level feeling wallet friction.

If Action Codes become the standard for onchain intent
and if Solana becomes the place where that happens first
I’ll know this was the right chain to build on.

We’re just getting started.

🌐 Action Codes 📦 GitHub 🎥 Try the bot