Programming Model

Lamport

The smallest unit of SOL, named after Leslie Lamport. 1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 (10^9) lamports. All balances and transfers on Solana are denominated in lamports internally. The minimum balance for an account to be rent-exempt is calculated in lamports based on the account's data size.

IDlamport

Plain meaning

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The smallest unit of SOL, named after Leslie Lamport. 1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 (10^9) lamports. All balances and transfers on Solana are denominated in lamports internally. The minimum balance for an account to be rent-exempt is calculated in lamports based on the account's data size.

Mental model

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Technical context

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

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Lamport (lamport)
Category: Programming Model
Definition: The smallest unit of SOL, named after Leslie Lamport. 1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 (10^9) lamports. All balances and transfers on Solana are denominated in lamports internally. The minimum balance for an account to be rent-exempt is calculated in lamports based on the account's data size.
Related: SOL, Rent
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Concept graph

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Branch

SOL

The native token of the Solana blockchain, used for paying transaction fees, staking, and rent. 1 SOL equals 1 billion lamports. SOL has an inflationary supply schedule starting at 8% annually, decreasing by 15% per year, with a long-term floor of 1.5%. Transaction base fees (5,000 lamports) are partially burned.

Branch

Rent

A fee mechanism that charges accounts for storing data on-chain. Accounts must maintain a minimum lamport balance proportional to their data size (~6.96 SOL per MB) to be rent-exempt. Since 2022, all new accounts must be rent-exempt at creation. Accounts falling below the threshold are removed during rent collection.

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Programming Model

SOL

The native token of the Solana blockchain, used for paying transaction fees, staking, and rent. 1 SOL equals 1 billion lamports. SOL has an inflationary supply schedule starting at 8% annually, decreasing by 15% per year, with a long-term floor of 1.5%. Transaction base fees (5,000 lamports) are partially burned.

Programming Model

Rent

A fee mechanism that charges accounts for storing data on-chain. Accounts must maintain a minimum lamport balance proportional to their data size (~6.96 SOL per MB) to be rent-exempt. Since 2022, all new accounts must be rent-exempt at creation. Accounts falling below the threshold are removed during rent collection.

Programming Model

Loader

A built-in program responsible for deploying, loading, and executing on-chain programs by interpreting their binary encoding. Solana has multiple loaders: the original BPF Loader (deprecated, immutable programs), BPF Loader 2 (deprecated), and the current Upgradeable BPF Loader that supports program upgrades and manages the program/program-data account split.

Programming Model

Keypair

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.

Commonly confused with

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Programming Modelloader

Loader

A built-in program responsible for deploying, loading, and executing on-chain programs by interpreting their binary encoding. Solana has multiple loaders: the original BPF Loader (deprecated, immutable programs), BPF Loader 2 (deprecated), and the current Upgradeable BPF Loader that supports program upgrades and manages the program/program-data account split.

Programming Modelmicro-lamport

Micro-Lamport

The unit used to express compute unit pricing for priority fees on Solana. One lamport equals 1,000,000 micro-lamports. When setting a compute unit price via the Compute Budget Program, the price is specified in micro-lamports per compute unit. The total priority fee is calculated as (compute unit price in micro-lamports * compute units consumed) / 1,000,000, rounded down to lamports.

Related terms

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Programming Modelsol

SOL

The native token of the Solana blockchain, used for paying transaction fees, staking, and rent. 1 SOL equals 1 billion lamports. SOL has an inflationary supply schedule starting at 8% annually, decreasing by 15% per year, with a long-term floor of 1.5%. Transaction base fees (5,000 lamports) are partially burned.

Programming Modelrent

Rent

A fee mechanism that charges accounts for storing data on-chain. Accounts must maintain a minimum lamport balance proportional to their data size (~6.96 SOL per MB) to be rent-exempt. Since 2022, all new accounts must be rent-exempt at creation. Accounts falling below the threshold are removed during rent collection.

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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.