Glossary OS

Plain meaning

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A Solana WebSocket subscription method that pushes a notification when a specific transaction signature reaches the requested commitment level (processed, confirmed, or finalized). It is the standard way to wait for transaction confirmation without polling, returning the signature status including any error information. The subscription automatically unsubscribes after delivering one notification. Commonly used in dApp frontends to show real-time transaction status updates to users.

Mental model

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Technical context

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RPCs, validators, snapshots, indexing, and network plumbing.

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signatureSubscribe (signature-subscribe)
Category: Infrastructure
Definition: A Solana WebSocket subscription method that pushes a notification when a specific transaction signature reaches the requested commitment level (processed, confirmed, or finalized). It is the standard way to wait for transaction confirmation without polling, returning the signature status including any error information. The subscription automatically unsubscribes after delivering one notification. Commonly used in dApp frontends to show real-time transaction status updates to users.
Related: WebSocket Subscriptions, Signature, Commitment Levels

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Concept graph

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Branch

WebSocket Subscriptions

A persistent bidirectional connection to a Solana RPC node's WebSocket endpoint (typically on port 8900) that allows clients to receive real-time push notifications when on-chain state changes, rather than polling via HTTP. The subscription model supports account changes, program account changes, slot updates, root changes, signature confirmations, and log emission, each returning a subscription ID used to later unsubscribe.

RPC (Remote Procedure Call)accountSubscribe

Open term

Branch

Signature

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.

Transaction Keypair

Open term

Branch

Commitment Levels

The three transaction confirmation tiers exposed by Solana RPC: 'processed' (transaction executed by leader, not yet voted on), 'confirmed' (optimistic confirmation—66.7%+ stake voted, ~400ms), and 'finalized' (rooted—31+ confirmations, ~12-13s). Applications choose the level based on their security vs. latency requirements.

Finality

Open term

Next concepts to explore

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Infrastructure

WebSocket Subscriptions

A persistent bidirectional connection to a Solana RPC node's WebSocket endpoint (typically on port 8900) that allows clients to receive real-time push notifications when on-chain state changes, rather than polling via HTTP. The subscription model supports account changes, program account changes, slot updates, root changes, signature confirmations, and log emission, each returning a subscription ID used to later unsubscribe.

Open term

Programming Model

Signature

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.

Open term

Core Protocol

Commitment Levels

The three transaction confirmation tiers exposed by Solana RPC: 'processed' (transaction executed by leader, not yet voted on), 'confirmed' (optimistic confirmation—66.7%+ stake voted, ~400ms), and 'finalized' (rooted—31+ confirmations, ~12-13s). Applications choose the level based on their security vs. latency requirements.

Open term

Infrastructure

Solana Actions

A protocol specification that standardizes how web servers expose signable Solana transactions and messages via HTTPS endpoints, enabling any URL to become an interactive blockchain entry point. Actions use a GET/POST handshake similar to Solana Pay Transaction Requests but are generalized beyond payments to support arbitrary on-chain operations (voting, staking, DeFi interactions), and serve as the server-side counterpart to Blinks, which render Actions as embeddable UI components.

Open term

Related terms

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Infrastructurewebsocket

WebSocket Subscriptions

A persistent bidirectional connection to a Solana RPC node's WebSocket endpoint (typically on port 8900) that allows clients to receive real-time push notifications when on-chain state changes, rather than polling via HTTP. The subscription model supports account changes, program account changes, slot updates, root changes, signature confirmations, and log emission, each returning a subscription ID used to later unsubscribe.

Open term

Programming Modelsignature

Signature

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.

Open term

Core Protocolcommitment-levels

Commitment Levels

The three transaction confirmation tiers exposed by Solana RPC: 'processed' (transaction executed by leader, not yet voted on), 'confirmed' (optimistic confirmation—66.7%+ stake voted, ~400ms), and 'finalized' (rooted—31+ confirmations, ~12-13s). Applications choose the level based on their security vs. latency requirements.

Open term

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Infrastructure

RPC (Remote Procedure Call)

The JSON-RPC 2.0 protocol interface through which clients communicate with Solana nodes to query chain state, submit transactions, and subscribe to events. Solana exposes a rich set of HTTP and WebSocket endpoints (e.g., getAccountInfo, sendTransaction) that abstract direct peer-to-peer network participation, making RPC the primary integration point for wallets, dApps, and indexers.

Open term

Infrastructure

RPC Node

A Solana full node that stores ledger state and serves JSON-RPC and WebSocket requests from clients without participating in consensus or voting. RPC nodes must replay every transaction to maintain an accurate account state database, and high-throughput deployments typically run dedicated RPC nodes with large SSDs, high RAM (256 GB+), and high-bandwidth network connections to handle concurrent client load without impacting validator performance.

Open term

Infrastructure

RPC Methods

The enumerated JSON-RPC endpoints exposed by Solana nodes, covering account queries (getAccountInfo, getMultipleAccounts, getProgramAccounts), block and transaction retrieval (getBlock, getTransaction), cluster metadata (getEpochInfo, getSlot, getVersion), and transaction submission (sendTransaction, simulateTransaction). Methods accept a Commitment parameter (processed, confirmed, finalized) to control the recency-vs-safety tradeoff of returned data.

Open term

Infrastructure

getAccountInfo

An RPC method that returns the complete on-chain state of a single account identified by its base-58 public key, including its lamport balance, owner program, executable flag, rent epoch, and raw data payload encoded as base64 or base58. It is the most fundamental read primitive in Solana development and is called at the specified commitment level, with the data field being null if the account does not exist.

Open term