Learn Solana development: a roadmap from beginner to advanced

A free, ordered path through Sol.College. Each step links lessons built from real, permissively licensed code in the stack, practical guides, and the official docs. Work through it in order, or jump to the stage you need.

1. Stage 1: Foundations Beginner

   Learn the account model first: everything on Solana is an account, programs are stateless, and transactions list every account they touch up front. Then set up the toolchain and get devnet SOL.

   • Set up a Solana development environment Guide
   • Solana docs: Core concepts
   • Glossary

2. Stage 2: Clients and transactions Beginner

   Read state and send transactions from TypeScript before writing a program, so you know what a program receives.

   • Building and sending transactions from a client Beginner
   • Solana docs: Transactions

3. Stage 3: Your first Anchor program Beginner

   Scaffold a workspace, declare accounts with constraints, and store state at PDAs.

   • Anchor account constraints Beginner
   • Program Derived Addresses (PDAs) Beginner
   • The Anchor workflow Guide
   • Solana docs: Build your first program

4. Stage 4: Tokens and composition Intermediate

   Create mints and token accounts, move tokens, and call other programs through CPIs, signing with PDAs where needed.

   • SPL Tokens: mints, accounts and transfers Intermediate
   • Cross-Program Invocations (CPIs) Intermediate
   • Token-2022 (Token Extensions) Intermediate

5. Stage 5: Full-stack dapp Intermediate

   Connect a wallet, call your program from the browser through its IDL, and deploy to devnet.

   • NFTs with Metaplex Intermediate
   • Solana Pay Intermediate
   • Blinks and Solana Actions Intermediate
   • Build a Solana dapp end to end Guide
   • Testing Solana programs Guide

6. Stage 6: Advanced patterns Advanced

   Study complete programs: escrow, staking, oracles and compressed state, each from real projects in the stack.

   • Escrow patterns Advanced
   • Staking and reward accrual Advanced
   • Oracles: Pyth and Switchboard Advanced
   • Compressed NFTs and state compression Advanced
   • AI agents on Solana Advanced
   • Browse topics

7. Stage 7: Ship to production Advanced

   Test the failure paths, review security, publish a verifiable build and move to mainnet with a multisig upgrade authority.

   • Solana program security checklist Guide
   • Deploy to devnet, then mainnet Guide

Then build something

The what to build pages show where the stack has few strong projects, and the explorer lets you filter real projects by framework to fork.