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).
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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).
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Accounts, instructions, PDAs, transactions, and execution flow.
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Program (program) Category: Programming Model Definition: 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). Aliases: Smart Contract Related: Account, Instruction, BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter)
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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.
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.
Berkeley Packet Filter—the original bytecode format used for Solana programs, inherited from Linux's eBPF. Programs written in Rust or C are compiled to BPF bytecode and executed in a sandboxed VM. BPF has been superseded by SBF on Solana but the tooling names (BPF Loader, cargo build-bpf) persist for historical reasons.
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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.
The public key that uniquely identifies a deployed program. It's the address of the program's executable account. When invoking a program, the instruction specifies the program_id. Anchor's `declare_id!()` macro hardcodes the expected program ID. PDAs are derived relative to a program's ID, tying state to the specific program.
A native Solana program (address: ComputeBudget111111111111111111111111111111) that allows transactions to configure their compute resource limits. It provides two key instructions: SetComputeUnitLimit (set the max CU a transaction can consume, up to 1.4M) and SetComputeUnitPrice (set the micro-lamport price per CU for priority fees). These instructions must appear before any program instructions in the transaction.
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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.
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.
Berkeley Packet Filter—the original bytecode format used for Solana programs, inherited from Linux's eBPF. Programs written in Rust or C are compiled to BPF bytecode and executed in a sandboxed VM. BPF has been superseded by SBF on Solana but the tooling names (BPF Loader, cargo build-bpf) persist for historical reasons.
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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.
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.
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.