Solana glossary
Core Solana and Anchor terms in plain English. Each links to the official docs and, where there is one, the Sol.College lesson that shows it in real code.
- Account
- Solana stores all state in accounts: an address, a lamport balance, an owner program and a data buffer. Only the owner program can change an account's data. Docs
- Lamport
- The smallest unit of SOL. One SOL is 1,000,000,000 lamports. Docs
- Rent exemption
- Accounts must hold a minimum lamport balance proportional to their size to stay on-chain. Closing an account returns that balance. Docs · Lesson: Anchor account constraints
- Program
- Executable code deployed to an account. Programs are stateless; they read and write other accounts passed into each instruction. Ethereum calls these smart contracts. Docs
- Instruction
- A call to one program: the program ID, the list of accounts it touches (with signer and writable flags), and an opaque data payload. Docs · Lesson: Building and sending transactions from a client
- Transaction
- One or more instructions plus signatures and a recent blockhash. Instructions in a transaction succeed or fail together. Docs · Lesson: Building and sending transactions from a client
- Recent blockhash
- A hash every transaction includes to prove it is fresh. A transaction whose blockhash is too old is rejected, so clients fetch one just before signing. Docs · Lesson: Building and sending transactions from a client
- Signer
- An account whose private key signed the transaction. Programs check signer flags to authorise actions. Docs · Lesson: Anchor account constraints
- Program Derived Address (PDA)
- An address derived from seeds and a program ID that has no private key. Only that program can sign for it, through invoke_signed. Docs · Lesson: Program Derived Addresses (PDAs)
- Bump seed
- The extra byte added to PDA seeds so the derived address falls off the ed25519 curve. The canonical bump is the first one that works, counting down from 255. Docs · Lesson: Program Derived Addresses (PDAs)
- Cross-Program Invocation (CPI)
- One program calling an instruction on another, such as the Token Program. A PDA can sign a CPI with its seeds. Docs · Lesson: Cross-Program Invocations (CPIs)
- SPL Token
- The standard token program for fungible and non-fungible tokens on Solana. Docs · Lesson: SPL Tokens: mints, accounts and transfers
- Mint account
- The account that defines a token: its supply, decimals and mint authority. Docs · Lesson: SPL Tokens: mints, accounts and transfers
- Token account
- An account holding a balance of one mint for one owner. Docs · Lesson: SPL Tokens: mints, accounts and transfers
- Associated Token Account (ATA)
- The canonical token account address for a given wallet and mint, derived deterministically so anyone can find it. Docs · Lesson: SPL Tokens: mints, accounts and transfers
- Token-2022
- A second token program, also called Token Extensions, that adds optional features such as transfer fees, metadata and transfer hooks. Docs · Lesson: Token-2022 (Token Extensions)
- Anchor
- A Rust framework for Solana programs that handles serialisation, account validation through constraints, and IDL generation. Docs · Lesson: Anchor account constraints
- IDL
- Interface Definition Language: a JSON description of a program's instructions and accounts that Anchor generates and clients use to build calls. Docs · Lesson: Building and sending transactions from a client
- Account discriminator
- The first 8 bytes Anchor writes into each account it creates, identifying the account type so one type can't be passed off as another. Docs · Lesson: Anchor account constraints
- Compute units
- The measure of work a transaction may do. Each transaction has a compute limit, and clients can request a specific limit. Docs · Lesson: Building and sending transactions from a client
- Priority fee
- An optional fee per compute unit, set with the Compute Budget program, that helps a transaction get scheduled when blocks are busy. Docs · Lesson: Building and sending transactions from a client
- Commitment
- How final a read or confirmation is: processed, confirmed or finalized. Docs · Lesson: Building and sending transactions from a client
- Devnet
- A public Solana cluster for testing. Devnet SOL is free from the faucet and has no value. Docs
- The key allowed to redeploy a program. Many teams hand it to a multisig, or remove it to make the program immutable. Docs
- Metaplex
- The set of programs and standards most Solana NFTs use, including Token Metadata, Core and Bubblegum. Docs · Lesson: NFTs with Metaplex
- Compressed NFT
- An NFT stored as a leaf in a concurrent Merkle tree rather than in its own accounts, which makes large mints cheap. Docs · Lesson: Compressed NFTs and state compression
- Solana Pay
- A URL standard for payment requests that wallets can scan as QR codes. Docs · Lesson: Solana Pay
- Actions and Blinks
- Actions are APIs that return a signable transaction; Blinks are links that render an Action as buttons in a supporting client. Docs · Lesson: Blinks and Solana Actions
- Address lookup table
- An on-chain list of addresses that versioned transactions can reference by index, so they fit more accounts. Docs · Lesson: Building and sending transactions from a client
- Sysvar
- Special accounts exposing cluster state to programs, such as Clock (time) and Rent. Docs · Lesson: Staking and reward accrual