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Infrastructure

Solana Pay

An open payment standard and SDK that defines URI schemes and protocol flows for requesting SOL or SPL token transfers and for constructing and returning partially-built transactions from merchant backends to user wallets. It comprises two sub-protocols — Transfer Requests (simple static payment URIs) and Transaction Requests (dynamic server-signed transaction fetching) — and enables point-of-sale payments, loyalty programs, and interactive commerce experiences using QR codes or deeplinks.

IDsolana-pay
Plain meaning

Plain meaning

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An open payment standard and SDK that defines URI schemes and protocol flows for requesting SOL or SPL token transfers and for constructing and returning partially-built transactions from merchant backends to user wallets. It comprises two sub-protocols — Transfer Requests (simple static payment URIs) and Transaction Requests (dynamic server-signed transaction fetching) — and enables point-of-sale payments, loyalty programs, and interactive commerce experiences using QR codes or deeplinks.

Mental model

Mental model

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Technical context

Technical context

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

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Solana Pay (solana-pay)
Category: Infrastructure
Definition: An open payment standard and SDK that defines URI schemes and protocol flows for requesting SOL or SPL token transfers and for constructing and returning partially-built transactions from merchant backends to user wallets. It comprises two sub-protocols — Transfer Requests (simple static payment URIs) and Transaction Requests (dynamic server-signed transaction fetching) — and enables point-of-sale payments, loyalty programs, and interactive commerce experiences using QR codes or deeplinks.
Related: Transaction Request (Solana Pay), Transfer Request (Solana Pay)
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Concept graph

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Branch

Transaction Request (Solana Pay)

A Solana Pay protocol flow in which a QR code or link encodes an HTTPS URL; when scanned, the wallet performs a GET request to discover metadata (label, icon) and then a POST request with the user's public key, receiving a base64-encoded partially-signed transaction that the wallet can inspect, sign, and submit. This dynamic model enables programmable commerce flows such as NFT minting, coupon redemption, and multi-step checkout because the merchant server constructs the transaction at request time rather than encoding it statically.

Solana Actions
Open term
Branch

Transfer Request (Solana Pay)

The simpler of the two Solana Pay sub-protocols, encoding a static SOL or SPL token payment request as a URI in the format solana:<recipient>?amount=<value>&spl-token=<mint>&label=<label>&memo=<memo>. Transfer Request URIs are fully self-contained and require no server interaction — wallets parse the URI and construct the system program transfer or SPL token transfer instruction locally, making them ideal for fixed-price invoices and tip links.

Open term
Next concepts to explore

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Infrastructure

Transaction Request (Solana Pay)

A Solana Pay protocol flow in which a QR code or link encodes an HTTPS URL; when scanned, the wallet performs a GET request to discover metadata (label, icon) and then a POST request with the user's public key, receiving a base64-encoded partially-signed transaction that the wallet can inspect, sign, and submit. This dynamic model enables programmable commerce flows such as NFT minting, coupon redemption, and multi-step checkout because the merchant server constructs the transaction at request time rather than encoding it statically.

Open term
Infrastructure

Transfer Request (Solana Pay)

The simpler of the two Solana Pay sub-protocols, encoding a static SOL or SPL token payment request as a URI in the format solana:<recipient>?amount=<value>&spl-token=<mint>&label=<label>&memo=<memo>. Transfer Request URIs are fully self-contained and require no server interaction — wallets parse the URI and construct the system program transfer or SPL token transfer instruction locally, making them ideal for fixed-price invoices and tip links.

Open term
Infrastructure

Staked Connection

An RPC connection routed through a validator or RPC node that holds delegated stake, granting the connection higher priority under Solana's Stake-Weighted Quality of Service (SWQoS) system. Transactions submitted via staked connections receive preferential bandwidth allocation to the leader's TPU, significantly improving landing rates during periods of network congestion. RPC providers like Helius and Triton offer staked connections as a premium feature for production applications.

Open term
Infrastructure

Solana Mobile

A hardware and software initiative by Solana Labs producing Android smartphones (Saga, Chapter 2) with a secure element-backed seed vault for private key storage, a curated dApp store for Solana applications, and the Mobile Wallet Adapter protocol for standardized wallet-dApp communication on mobile. The Solana Mobile Stack (SMS) enables native mobile dApps to interact with on-device wallets without browser extensions or QR code scanning, targeting the mobile-first crypto user base.

Open term
Commonly confused with

Terms nearby in vocabulary, acronym, or conceptual neighborhood.

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Infrastructuresolana-mobile

Solana Mobile

A hardware and software initiative by Solana Labs producing Android smartphones (Saga, Chapter 2) with a secure element-backed seed vault for private key storage, a curated dApp store for Solana applications, and the Mobile Wallet Adapter protocol for standardized wallet-dApp communication on mobile. The Solana Mobile Stack (SMS) enables native mobile dApps to interact with on-device wallets without browser extensions or QR code scanning, targeting the mobile-first crypto user base.

AliasSMSAliasSaga
Open term
Infrastructureshredstream-proxy

Shredstream Proxy

A low-latency relay layer that receives shred feeds from validator-adjacent infrastructure and forwards them into downstream search, trading, or analytics systems without requiring each consumer to maintain its own direct shred connection. Teams use shredstream proxy patterns to normalize transport, centralize access control, and fan out raw block data to internal services that care about block contents before standard RPC surfaces catch up.

Open term
Infrastructureactions

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.

AliasActions
Open term
Related terms

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Infrastructuretransaction-request

Transaction Request (Solana Pay)

A Solana Pay protocol flow in which a QR code or link encodes an HTTPS URL; when scanned, the wallet performs a GET request to discover metadata (label, icon) and then a POST request with the user's public key, receiving a base64-encoded partially-signed transaction that the wallet can inspect, sign, and submit. This dynamic model enables programmable commerce flows such as NFT minting, coupon redemption, and multi-step checkout because the merchant server constructs the transaction at request time rather than encoding it statically.

Open term
Infrastructuretransfer-request

Transfer Request (Solana Pay)

The simpler of the two Solana Pay sub-protocols, encoding a static SOL or SPL token payment request as a URI in the format solana:<recipient>?amount=<value>&spl-token=<mint>&label=<label>&memo=<memo>. Transfer Request URIs are fully self-contained and require no server interaction — wallets parse the URI and construct the system program transfer or SPL token transfer instruction locally, making them ideal for fixed-price invoices and tip links.

Open term
More in category

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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