A pair of a 32-byte Ed25519 private key and its corresponding 32-byte public key. Keypairs are used to sign transactions and derive account addresses. They are stored as 64-byte arrays (private + public concatenated) in JSON files by the Solana CLI. The private key should never be shared or exposed.
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A pair of a 32-byte Ed25519 private key and its corresponding 32-byte public key. Keypairs are used to sign transactions and derive account addresses. They are stored as 64-byte arrays (private + public concatenated) in JSON files by the Solana CLI. The private key should never be shared or exposed.
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Accounts, instructions, PDAs, transactions, and execution flow.
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Keypair (keypair) Category: Programming Model Definition: A pair of a 32-byte Ed25519 private key and its corresponding 32-byte public key. Keypairs are used to sign transactions and derive account addresses. They are stored as 64-byte arrays (private + public concatenated) in JSON files by the Solana CLI. The private key should never be shared or exposed. Related: Public Key (Pubkey), Signature, Wallet
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A 32-byte Ed25519 public key that serves as the unique address for accounts on Solana. Pubkeys are displayed as Base58-encoded strings (e.g., '11111111111111111111111111111111' for the System Program). Every account, program, and PDA is identified by its pubkey.
A 64-byte Ed25519 digital signature over a transaction's message. Each signer in a transaction produces one signature. The first signature (from the fee payer) also serves as the unique transaction ID. Signature verification is parallelized in the TPU's sigverify stage using GPU acceleration.
Software or hardware that manages cryptographic keys and enables users to sign transactions, view balances, and interact with dApps. Hot wallets (Phantom, Solflare, Backpack) are internet-connected for convenience. Cold wallets (Ledger, Trezor) store keys offline for security. Wallets don't actually 'hold' tokens—they hold the private keys that control on-chain accounts.
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A 32-byte Ed25519 public key that serves as the unique address for accounts on Solana. Pubkeys are displayed as Base58-encoded strings (e.g., '11111111111111111111111111111111' for the System Program). Every account, program, and PDA is identified by its pubkey.
A 64-byte Ed25519 digital signature over a transaction's message. Each signer in a transaction produces one signature. The first signature (from the fee payer) also serves as the unique transaction ID. Signature verification is parallelized in the TPU's sigverify stage using GPU acceleration.
Software or hardware that manages cryptographic keys and enables users to sign transactions, view balances, and interact with dApps. Hot wallets (Phantom, Solflare, Backpack) are internet-connected for convenience. Cold wallets (Ledger, Trezor) store keys offline for security. Wallets don't actually 'hold' tokens—they hold the private keys that control on-chain accounts.
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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.
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).
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.
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.