An account address derived deterministically from a program ID and a set of seeds, with no corresponding private key. PDAs are created by finding a pubkey that does NOT lie on the Ed25519 curve (using a bump seed). Since there's no private key, only the deriving program can sign for the PDA via invoke_signed, making PDAs ideal for program-controlled state.
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An account address derived deterministically from a program ID and a set of seeds, with no corresponding private key. PDAs are created by finding a pubkey that does NOT lie on the Ed25519 curve (using a bump seed). Since there's no private key, only the deriving program can sign for the PDA via invoke_signed, making PDAs ideal for program-controlled state.
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Think of it as a program-owned address that behaves like a wallet or storage slot your program can control without a private key.
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Accounts, instructions, PDAs, transactions, and execution flow.
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Program Derived Address (PDA) (pda) Category: Programming Model Definition: An account address derived deterministically from a program ID and a set of seeds, with no corresponding private key. PDAs are created by finding a pubkey that does NOT lie on the Ed25519 curve (using a bump seed). Since there's no private key, only the deriving program can sign for the PDA via invoke_signed, making PDAs ideal for program-controlled state. Aliases: PDA Related: Seeds, Bump Seed, find_program_address
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Byte arrays used as inputs to derive a Program Derived Address. Seeds can be any combination of static strings, user pubkeys, mint addresses, or other identifiers (each seed max 32 bytes, up to 16 seeds). For example, seeds=[b'vault', user.key()] derives a unique vault PDA for each user.
A single byte (255 down to 0) appended to PDA seeds to push the derived address off the Ed25519 curve. find_program_address tries bump=255 first and decrements until finding a valid PDA. The first valid bump found is the canonical bump. Always store and reuse the canonical bump to avoid security issues.
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.
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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.
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).
The account that stores the actual SBF ELF bytecode for an upgradeable program. It is separate from the program's main account (which just points to the program data). This separation allows the bytecode to be swapped during upgrades while the program ID stays the same. The program data account also stores the upgrade authority pubkey.
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Byte arrays used as inputs to derive a Program Derived Address. Seeds can be any combination of static strings, user pubkeys, mint addresses, or other identifiers (each seed max 32 bytes, up to 16 seeds). For example, seeds=[b'vault', user.key()] derives a unique vault PDA for each user.
A single byte (255 down to 0) appended to PDA seeds to push the derived address off the Ed25519 curve. find_program_address tries bump=255 first and decrements until finding a valid PDA. The first valid bump found is the canonical bump. Always store and reuse the canonical bump to avoid security issues.
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.
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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.