Programming Model

System Program

The built-in native program (address: 11111111111111111111111111111111) responsible for creating new accounts, transferring SOL between accounts, allocating account data space, and assigning account ownership to programs. It is the only program that can create new accounts and is invoked in nearly every transaction.

IDsystem-program

Plain meaning

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The built-in native program (address: 11111111111111111111111111111111) responsible for creating new accounts, transferring SOL between accounts, allocating account data space, and assigning account ownership to programs. It is the only program that can create new accounts and is invoked in nearly every transaction.

Mental model

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Think of it as one of the core moving pieces your program reads, writes, or invokes at runtime.

Technical context

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

Why builders care

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System Program (system-program)
Category: Programming Model
Definition: The built-in native program (address: 11111111111111111111111111111111) responsible for creating new accounts, transferring SOL between accounts, allocating account data space, and assigning account ownership to programs. It is the only program that can create new accounts and is invoked in nearly every transaction.
Related: Program, Create Account, Transaction
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Concept graph

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These branches show which concepts this term touches directly and what sits one layer beyond them.

Branch

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).

Branch

Create Account

A System Program instruction that creates a new account with specified space and owner, funding it with enough lamports for rent exemption. Parameters: from (fee payer), to (new account keypair), lamports, space (bytes), and owner (program ID). The new account's data is zero-initialized.

Branch

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.

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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

Create Account

A System Program instruction that creates a new account with specified space and owner, funding it with enough lamports for rent exemption. Parameters: from (fee payer), to (new account keypair), lamports, space (bytes), and owner (program ID). The new account's data is zero-initialized.

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.

Programming Model

Sysvar

Special read-only accounts maintained by the runtime that expose cluster state to programs. Key sysvars include Clock (slot, timestamp), Rent (lamports-per-byte), EpochSchedule (epoch parameters), RecentBlockhashes, StakeHistory, and Fees. Programs access sysvars by including the sysvar account in the instruction or via the sol_get_sysvar syscall.

Commonly confused with

Terms nearby in vocabulary, acronym, or conceptual neighborhood.

These entries are easy to mix up when you are reading quickly, prompting an LLM, or onboarding into a new layer of Solana.

Programming Modelprogram

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).

AliasSmart Contract
Programming Modelcompute-budget-program

Compute Budget 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.

Programming Modelfind-program-address

find_program_address

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.

Related terms

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Programming Modelprogram

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 Modelcreate-account

Create Account

A System Program instruction that creates a new account with specified space and owner, funding it with enough lamports for rent exemption. Parameters: from (fee payer), to (new account keypair), lamports, space (bytes), and owner (program ID). The new account's data is zero-initialized.

Programming Modeltransaction

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.

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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.