Infrastructure

Solana Actions

A protocol specification that standardizes how web servers expose signable Solana transactions and messages via HTTPS endpoints, enabling any URL to become an interactive blockchain entry point. Actions use a GET/POST handshake similar to Solana Pay Transaction Requests but are generalized beyond payments to support arbitrary on-chain operations (voting, staking, DeFi interactions), and serve as the server-side counterpart to Blinks, which render Actions as embeddable UI components.

IDactionsAliasActions

Plain meaning

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A protocol specification that standardizes how web servers expose signable Solana transactions and messages via HTTPS endpoints, enabling any URL to become an interactive blockchain entry point. Actions use a GET/POST handshake similar to Solana Pay Transaction Requests but are generalized beyond payments to support arbitrary on-chain operations (voting, staking, DeFi interactions), and serve as the server-side counterpart to Blinks, which render Actions as embeddable UI components.

Mental model

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Technical context

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RPCs, validators, snapshots, indexing, and network plumbing.

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Solana Actions (actions)
Category: Infrastructure
Definition: A protocol specification that standardizes how web servers expose signable Solana transactions and messages via HTTPS endpoints, enabling any URL to become an interactive blockchain entry point. Actions use a GET/POST handshake similar to Solana Pay Transaction Requests but are generalized beyond payments to support arbitrary on-chain operations (voting, staking, DeFi interactions), and serve as the server-side counterpart to Blinks, which render Actions as embeddable UI components.
Aliases: Actions
Related: Blinks (Blockchain Links), Transaction Request (Solana Pay)
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Concept graph

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Branch

Blinks (Blockchain Links)

Client-side renderers and URL wrappers that convert Solana Actions endpoints into interactive, embeddable UI components — such as buttons, input fields, and transaction previews — that can appear inside wallets, browser extensions, and social media platforms without requiring users to navigate to a dApp. A Blink is essentially a URL prefixed with https://dial.to/?action= that signals to compatible clients to fetch and render the corresponding Action metadata, enabling one-click on-chain transactions from any webpage or feed.

Branch

Transaction Request (Solana Pay)

A Solana Pay protocol flow in which a QR code or link encodes an HTTPS URL; when scanned, the wallet performs a GET request to discover metadata (label, icon) and then a POST request with the user's public key, receiving a base64-encoded partially-signed transaction that the wallet can inspect, sign, and submit. This dynamic model enables programmable commerce flows such as NFT minting, coupon redemption, and multi-step checkout because the merchant server constructs the transaction at request time rather than encoding it statically.

Next concepts to explore

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Infrastructure

Blinks (Blockchain Links)

Client-side renderers and URL wrappers that convert Solana Actions endpoints into interactive, embeddable UI components — such as buttons, input fields, and transaction previews — that can appear inside wallets, browser extensions, and social media platforms without requiring users to navigate to a dApp. A Blink is essentially a URL prefixed with https://dial.to/?action= that signals to compatible clients to fetch and render the corresponding Action metadata, enabling one-click on-chain transactions from any webpage or feed.

Infrastructure

Transaction Request (Solana Pay)

A Solana Pay protocol flow in which a QR code or link encodes an HTTPS URL; when scanned, the wallet performs a GET request to discover metadata (label, icon) and then a POST request with the user's public key, receiving a base64-encoded partially-signed transaction that the wallet can inspect, sign, and submit. This dynamic model enables programmable commerce flows such as NFT minting, coupon redemption, and multi-step checkout because the merchant server constructs the transaction at request time rather than encoding it statically.

Infrastructure

Solana Explorer

Web-based blockchain browsers that index and visualize Solana ledger data including transactions, accounts, blocks, validators, and token metadata in human-readable form. Explorer.solana.com is the official Solana Labs explorer; Solscan (solscan.io) is the most popular community explorer offering DeFi analytics and token holder data; SolanaFM (solana.fm) provides enhanced transaction decoding, program labeling, and cross-program invocation graphs — all connect to RPC nodes and indexers to serve their data.

Infrastructure

signatureSubscribe

A Solana WebSocket subscription method that pushes a notification when a specific transaction signature reaches the requested commitment level (processed, confirmed, or finalized). It is the standard way to wait for transaction confirmation without polling, returning the signature status including any error information. The subscription automatically unsubscribes after delivering one notification. Commonly used in dApp frontends to show real-time transaction status updates to users.

Commonly confused with

Terms nearby in vocabulary, acronym, or conceptual neighborhood.

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Infrastructuresolana-mobile

Solana Mobile

A hardware and software initiative by Solana Labs producing Android smartphones (Saga, Chapter 2) with a secure element-backed seed vault for private key storage, a curated dApp store for Solana applications, and the Mobile Wallet Adapter protocol for standardized wallet-dApp communication on mobile. The Solana Mobile Stack (SMS) enables native mobile dApps to interact with on-device wallets without browser extensions or QR code scanning, targeting the mobile-first crypto user base.

AliasSMSAliasSaga
Infrastructuresolana-pay

Solana Pay

An open payment standard and SDK that defines URI schemes and protocol flows for requesting SOL or SPL token transfers and for constructing and returning partially-built transactions from merchant backends to user wallets. It comprises two sub-protocols — Transfer Requests (simple static payment URIs) and Transaction Requests (dynamic server-signed transaction fetching) — and enables point-of-sale payments, loyalty programs, and interactive commerce experiences using QR codes or deeplinks.

Infrastructureexplorer

Solana Explorer

Web-based blockchain browsers that index and visualize Solana ledger data including transactions, accounts, blocks, validators, and token metadata in human-readable form. Explorer.solana.com is the official Solana Labs explorer; Solscan (solscan.io) is the most popular community explorer offering DeFi analytics and token holder data; SolanaFM (solana.fm) provides enhanced transaction decoding, program labeling, and cross-program invocation graphs — all connect to RPC nodes and indexers to serve their data.

AliasSolscanAliasSolanaFM
Related terms

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Infrastructureblinks

Blinks (Blockchain Links)

Client-side renderers and URL wrappers that convert Solana Actions endpoints into interactive, embeddable UI components — such as buttons, input fields, and transaction previews — that can appear inside wallets, browser extensions, and social media platforms without requiring users to navigate to a dApp. A Blink is essentially a URL prefixed with https://dial.to/?action= that signals to compatible clients to fetch and render the corresponding Action metadata, enabling one-click on-chain transactions from any webpage or feed.

Infrastructuretransaction-request

Transaction Request (Solana Pay)

A Solana Pay protocol flow in which a QR code or link encodes an HTTPS URL; when scanned, the wallet performs a GET request to discover metadata (label, icon) and then a POST request with the user's public key, receiving a base64-encoded partially-signed transaction that the wallet can inspect, sign, and submit. This dynamic model enables programmable commerce flows such as NFT minting, coupon redemption, and multi-step checkout because the merchant server constructs the transaction at request time rather than encoding it statically.

More in category

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Infrastructure

RPC (Remote Procedure Call)

The JSON-RPC 2.0 protocol interface through which clients communicate with Solana nodes to query chain state, submit transactions, and subscribe to events. Solana exposes a rich set of HTTP and WebSocket endpoints (e.g., getAccountInfo, sendTransaction) that abstract direct peer-to-peer network participation, making RPC the primary integration point for wallets, dApps, and indexers.

Infrastructure

RPC Node

A Solana full node that stores ledger state and serves JSON-RPC and WebSocket requests from clients without participating in consensus or voting. RPC nodes must replay every transaction to maintain an accurate account state database, and high-throughput deployments typically run dedicated RPC nodes with large SSDs, high RAM (256 GB+), and high-bandwidth network connections to handle concurrent client load without impacting validator performance.

Infrastructure

RPC Methods

The enumerated JSON-RPC endpoints exposed by Solana nodes, covering account queries (getAccountInfo, getMultipleAccounts, getProgramAccounts), block and transaction retrieval (getBlock, getTransaction), cluster metadata (getEpochInfo, getSlot, getVersion), and transaction submission (sendTransaction, simulateTransaction). Methods accept a Commitment parameter (processed, confirmed, finalized) to control the recency-vs-safety tradeoff of returned data.

Infrastructure

getAccountInfo

An RPC method that returns the complete on-chain state of a single account identified by its base-58 public key, including its lamport balance, owner program, executable flag, rent epoch, and raw data payload encoded as base64 or base58. It is the most fundamental read primitive in Solana development and is called at the specified commitment level, with the data field being null if the account does not exist.