Programming Model

Address Lookup Table (ALT)

An on-chain account that stores up to 256 pubkeys, enabling v0 transactions to reference accounts by 1-byte index instead of full 32-byte pubkeys. ALTs dramatically reduce transaction size when interacting with many accounts (e.g., DEX routing). ALTs must be created and populated in advance; entries become active after a slot delay.

IDaddress-lookup-tableAliasALTAliasLUT

Plain meaning

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An on-chain account that stores up to 256 pubkeys, enabling v0 transactions to reference accounts by 1-byte index instead of full 32-byte pubkeys. ALTs dramatically reduce transaction size when interacting with many accounts (e.g., DEX routing). ALTs must be created and populated in advance; entries become active after a slot delay.

Mental model

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Technical context

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Accounts, instructions, PDAs, transactions, and execution flow.

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Address Lookup Table (ALT) (address-lookup-table)
Category: Programming Model
Definition: An on-chain account that stores up to 256 pubkeys, enabling v0 transactions to reference accounts by 1-byte index instead of full 32-byte pubkeys. ALTs dramatically reduce transaction size when interacting with many accounts (e.g., DEX routing). ALTs must be created and populated in advance; entries become active after a slot delay.
Aliases: ALT, LUT
Related: Versioned Transaction, Transaction Size Limit
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Concept graph

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Branch

Versioned Transaction

A transaction format introduced with v0 that supports address lookup tables. Legacy transactions include all pubkeys inline (limited to ~35 accounts); v0 transactions reference ALTs to include up to 256 accounts while staying within the 1,232-byte limit. The version byte (0) precedes the message.

Branch

Transaction Size Limit

The maximum serialized size of a Solana transaction: 1,232 bytes, matching the IPv6 minimum MTU to ensure single-packet transmission. This limit constrains the number of accounts, instructions, and data per transaction. Address lookup tables (v0 transactions) help fit more accounts within this limit.

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Programming Model

Versioned Transaction

A transaction format introduced with v0 that supports address lookup tables. Legacy transactions include all pubkeys inline (limited to ~35 accounts); v0 transactions reference ALTs to include up to 256 accounts while staying within the 1,232-byte limit. The version byte (0) precedes the message.

Programming Model

Transaction Size Limit

The maximum serialized size of a Solana transaction: 1,232 bytes, matching the IPv6 minimum MTU to ensure single-packet transmission. This limit constrains the number of accounts, instructions, and data per transaction. Address lookup tables (v0 transactions) help fit more accounts within this limit.

Programming Model

Authority

A pubkey with administrative privileges over a resource—such as the mint authority (can mint tokens), freeze authority (can freeze accounts), upgrade authority (can upgrade a program), or the signer authorized to perform operations on a PDA-controlled account. Authority is a convention, not a runtime concept.

Programming Model

AccountLoader (Anchor)

An Anchor account type that provides zero-copy access to large account data without deserializing the entire account upfront. AccountLoader wraps the raw account data and provides load() and load_mut() methods to access the data as a typed reference. It is used with #[account(zero_copy)] structs and is preferred over Account<T> when accounts exceed ~1KB, as it significantly reduces compute unit consumption.

Commonly confused with

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Programming Modelfind-program-address

find_program_address

A function that derives a PDA by iterating bump seeds from 255 down to 0 until finding a pubkey not on the Ed25519 curve. It returns (pubkey, bump). In Anchor, the #[account(seeds=[...], bump)] constraint calls this automatically. The corresponding create_program_address skips iteration and takes an explicit bump.

Related terms

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Programming Modelversioned-transaction

Versioned Transaction

A transaction format introduced with v0 that supports address lookup tables. Legacy transactions include all pubkeys inline (limited to ~35 accounts); v0 transactions reference ALTs to include up to 256 accounts while staying within the 1,232-byte limit. The version byte (0) precedes the message.

Programming Modeltransaction-size

Transaction Size Limit

The maximum serialized size of a Solana transaction: 1,232 bytes, matching the IPv6 minimum MTU to ensure single-packet transmission. This limit constrains the number of accounts, instructions, and data per transaction. Address lookup tables (v0 transactions) help fit more accounts within this limit.

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Programming Model

Account

The fundamental data storage unit on Solana. Every piece of state is stored in an account identified by a 32-byte public key. Accounts hold a lamport balance, an owner program, a data byte array (up to 10MB), and an executable flag. Only the owning program can modify an account's data, but anyone can credit lamports to it.

Programming Model

Program

Executable code deployed on-chain, equivalent to a smart contract on other blockchains. Programs are stateless—they store no data themselves but read/write data in separate accounts they own. Programs are compiled to SBF bytecode and loaded via the BPF Loader. Every program has a unique Program ID (its account's public key).

Programming Model

Instruction

A single operation within a transaction that invokes a program. An instruction specifies: (1) the program ID to call, (2) an array of account metas (pubkey, is_signer, is_writable), and (3) an opaque data byte array. Programs decode the instruction data to determine which operation to perform.

Programming Model

Transaction

An atomic unit of execution containing one or more instructions, a recent blockhash, and one or more signatures. All instructions in a transaction execute sequentially and atomically—if any instruction fails, the entire transaction reverts. Transactions have a 1,232-byte size limit (matching IPv6 MTU) and a default 200,000 CU budget.