# Open challenges in Mini-apps and Frames by David Furlong | Devcon SEA

- Speakers: [David Furlong](https://streameth.org/speakers/david-furlong)
- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2025-10-09
- Duration: 08:01
- Topics: Science & Technology
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt--LlOzt951z8
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LlOzt951z8

## Description

There are a number of open challenges we've run into with trying to make interoperable mini-apps work at Open Frames. I'll run through some of them and what I think it'll take to get great UX via Mini-apps.

Speaker(s): David Furlong
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Usability

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Devcon SEA was held in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov 12 - Nov 15, 2024.
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## Transcript

[Music] [Music] would love to uh have a show of hands who here knows what a frame is okay um okay so there's a bunch of you that don't know so I'll make sure to explain it and sort of have a sort of um intro to it um so uh I'm David Furlong um I've been working on frames JS which which is a library for making frames um and then also open frames which is a standard for frames that work in multiple ecosystems okay the clicker isn't working uh can we get some text support oh okay now it's working okay so before we start with frames uh I thought I'd quickly explain why frames sort of make sense to begin with I think there are three key problems to crypto ux uh the first is safety um so you know today you sign transactions with your wallet um they could be malicious and they could take all your money the second one is Simplicity um a lot of transactions require things like transaction simulation and very complex interfaces that you know we've gotten very used to as crypto users in navigating but um I don't know if you've tried sort of bridging lately but even that is is sort of pretty terrifying um so when we're thinking about onboarding the masses um and especially in Social that's something that's sort of top of Mind Simplicity is very important and then thirdly speed so uh a lot of crypto apps rely on things like wallet connect and um in my experience this has been sort of a lot of steps that are confusing sometimes don't work um and it makes it very slow to do something and when you add a lot of friction to an action uh consumers are less likely to do with them so what is a frame um so frame is a is a new type of embed um that when a link is shared uh on a social network like farcaster instead of showing a little card image uh and just a link to the website uh a frame allows the developer to specify um actions so buttons and optionally an input um that then can sort of uh be displayed by the app into this sort of mini app um and so this allows developers and websites to express u a small little uh nibble of of their app in this other app um and the second part that makes frames interesting is that uh when a user presses on one of these buttons um the uh the website for example the Girl Scout cookie website um gets a sign a signature that the user that has that identity actually took that action and so that allows the website to essentially authenticate the user uh and do actions on behalf so for example I can press a button and the zor app will let me um automatically follow someone on the Zora app without ever leaving warp cast so frames originated in farcaster um but now they're supported across numerous ecosystems so X MTP lens uh base profiles and um we have an extension for X as well that brings frames there so do uh frames today solve the three problems of crypto ux um so because this is a lightning talk and I have very little time I'm I'm only concerned with the technical problems around this so there's other problems that are sort of less technical like distribution of frames um but starting off with safety so um frames um so warcast innovated on frames by allowing people to Mint with a with a sort of point system called warps and that allowed people to transact with contracts without actually signing transactions with their wallets and so that's sort of a safer way of doing micro payments than than sort of traditionally in crypto where you sign a full transaction for every little little payment um and so that's work for some types of transactions but other types of transaction c s um still require a wallet signature um next Simplicity this works for some things but for example chest doesn't work very well speed um it works for a lot of small things but as soon as you get into more complex games or sort of five-step games um a lot of the sort of experiences become limited by the speed of frames um and that's because of the way frames work um everything at the top there is an image um and image generation is kind of slow um so where do we go from here um so there's been some discussions and Innovations on sort of mini apps uh as a as another type of technology that are similar to frames where frames are good for certain things like entry points one-step flows and transactions and maybe mini apps can be a more expressive layer beyond that thank you um any questions Havey to answer them thank you very much so we have about four minutes either you guys can quickly hop into the session QR code to ask questions or we can quickly just pass around the mic for David to answer if anyone has any questions two minutes don't miss the opportunity what's the difference between mini apps and Frames technically right so a frame can only express up to four buttons and an input and an image um mini apps are are really like mini websites so you can do sort of full programming you can have full interactivity um and so we've seen manyi apps for example in Telegram in the world ecosystem now and uh farcast is also exploring mini apps as well so with frames you're using images for outputs with mini apps is it the regular web technology yeah yeah that's right um which is has different tradeoffs right so um when a user is interacting within a mini app it's sort of like an untrusted environment so while if I sort of confirm a payment inside a frame the the sort of warp cast or the parent app knows that the user actually pressed on that button uh whereas if you're inside a mini apppp then it's sort of up to the mini app and and you can't really rely on you know what the mini apppp is is doing or the user is pressing within the mini app because the mini apppp could sort of be malicious or you know say the user is confirming the transaction but there's no way for the sort of parent app to know that amazing thank you anyone else have any questions right there hey uh is uh frame JS working on has a SDK or API that we can work on and test how does the mini app would look like in frames uh yeah so frames JS has a debugger and it has support for uh for mini apps uh so you can debug and of test the initial specs of mini apps the mini app spec in farcaster is still evolving and in a draft phase so we already support it but now now the specs Chang so um uh yeah and then we'll also have support for Min apps in open frames um and so um that's sort of a a new technology that's coming that's very exciting I think all right thank you very much let's give it up for David for giving us that amazing lightning talk and giving us his time thank you very much if you got