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Network

Transaction Fee

The total SOL cost to submit a transaction on Solana, composed of the base fee (5,000 lamports per signature) plus any optional priority fee (compute unit price × compute units consumed). Unlike Ethereum, Solana fees are not purely dynamic gas auctions — the base fee is fixed and priority fees are additive. Fees are deducted from the fee-payer account before execution; if the account lacks sufficient SOL, the transaction fails.

IDtransaction-fee
Plain meaning

Plain meaning

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The total SOL cost to submit a transaction on Solana, composed of the base fee (5,000 lamports per signature) plus any optional priority fee (compute unit price × compute units consumed). Unlike Ethereum, Solana fees are not purely dynamic gas auctions — the base fee is fixed and priority fees are additive. Fees are deducted from the fee-payer account before execution; if the account lacks sufficient SOL, the transaction fails.

Mental model

Mental model

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Technical context

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Transaction Fee (transaction-fee)
Category: Network
Definition: The total SOL cost to submit a transaction on Solana, composed of the base fee (5,000 lamports per signature) plus any optional priority fee (compute unit price × compute units consumed). Unlike Ethereum, Solana fees are not purely dynamic gas auctions — the base fee is fixed and priority fees are additive. Fees are deducted from the fee-payer account before execution; if the account lacks sufficient SOL, the transaction fails.
Related: Base Fee, Priority Fee, Lamport
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Concept graph

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Branch

Base Fee

The fixed, non-negotiable minimum fee charged per transaction signature on Solana, currently set at 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature. A transaction with N signatures pays N × 5,000 lamports as a base fee regardless of compute usage or network load. Fifty percent of the base fee is burned and fifty percent is paid to the current slot leader, making Solana mildly deflationary with usage.

Compute Units (CU)
Open term
Branch

Priority Fee

An optional additional fee paid on top of the base fee to increase the likelihood that a transaction is processed quickly by the current leader, expressed as a price in micro-lamports per compute unit (CU). The total priority fee equals (compute unit price × compute unit limit) / 1,000,000 lamports. Leaders sort transactions in their queue by fee-per-CU, so setting a competitive priority fee is the primary mechanism for ensuring reliable transaction landing during congestion.

Open term
Branch

Lamport

The smallest unit of SOL, named after Leslie Lamport. 1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 (10^9) lamports. All balances and transfers on Solana are denominated in lamports internally. The minimum balance for an account to be rent-exempt is calculated in lamports based on the account's data size.

SOLRent
Open term
Next concepts to explore

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Network

Base Fee

The fixed, non-negotiable minimum fee charged per transaction signature on Solana, currently set at 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature. A transaction with N signatures pays N × 5,000 lamports as a base fee regardless of compute usage or network load. Fifty percent of the base fee is burned and fifty percent is paid to the current slot leader, making Solana mildly deflationary with usage.

Open term
Network

Priority Fee

An optional additional fee paid on top of the base fee to increase the likelihood that a transaction is processed quickly by the current leader, expressed as a price in micro-lamports per compute unit (CU). The total priority fee equals (compute unit price × compute unit limit) / 1,000,000 lamports. Leaders sort transactions in their queue by fee-per-CU, so setting a competitive priority fee is the primary mechanism for ensuring reliable transaction landing during congestion.

Open term
Programming Model

Lamport

The smallest unit of SOL, named after Leslie Lamport. 1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 (10^9) lamports. All balances and transfers on Solana are denominated in lamports internally. The minimum balance for an account to be rent-exempt is calculated in lamports based on the account's data size.

Open term
Network

Transaction Landing

The outcome of a transaction being successfully included and confirmed in a Solana block, as opposed to being dropped, expiring, or failing simulation. Landing probability is influenced by priority fee competitiveness, blockhash freshness (must be within ~150 slots of creation), submission routing (direct to leader vs. RPC rebroadcast), and network congestion on the accounts involved. Developers optimize landing rates by using current-leader TPU endpoints, setting appropriate priority fees, and preflight-checking transactions before submission.

Open term
Commonly confused with

Terms nearby in vocabulary, acronym, or conceptual neighborhood.

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Networktransaction-landing

Transaction Landing

The outcome of a transaction being successfully included and confirmed in a Solana block, as opposed to being dropped, expiring, or failing simulation. Landing probability is influenced by priority fee competitiveness, blockhash freshness (must be within ~150 slots of creation), submission routing (direct to leader vs. RPC rebroadcast), and network congestion on the accounts involved. Developers optimize landing rates by using current-leader TPU endpoints, setting appropriate priority fees, and preflight-checking transactions before submission.

Open term
Networktransaction-retry

Transaction Retry / Rebroadcast

The practice of resubmitting a transaction multiple times until it lands or its blockhash expires, necessary because Solana does not guarantee delivery of any single submission and drops can occur at any pipeline stage. By default, Solana RPC nodes rebroadcast submitted transactions periodically, but this is unreliable; production applications implement client-side retry loops that resubmit the same signed transaction (with unchanged signature) at short intervals until confirmation is received or the blockhash expires (roughly 60–90 seconds after creation).

Open term
Networktpu-forwarding

TPU Forwarding

The mechanism by which non-leader validators forward incoming transactions to the current slot leader's TPU port so they can be included in the next block. When a validator receives transactions during slots it is not leading, it relays them to the upcoming leader(s) based on the leader schedule. This forwarding behavior, combined with Gulf Stream's look-ahead, means transactions can reach the leader before its slot begins, reducing confirmation latency.

Open term
Related terms

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Networkbase-fee

Base Fee

The fixed, non-negotiable minimum fee charged per transaction signature on Solana, currently set at 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature. A transaction with N signatures pays N × 5,000 lamports as a base fee regardless of compute usage or network load. Fifty percent of the base fee is burned and fifty percent is paid to the current slot leader, making Solana mildly deflationary with usage.

Open term
Networkpriority-fee

Priority Fee

An optional additional fee paid on top of the base fee to increase the likelihood that a transaction is processed quickly by the current leader, expressed as a price in micro-lamports per compute unit (CU). The total priority fee equals (compute unit price × compute unit limit) / 1,000,000 lamports. Leaders sort transactions in their queue by fee-per-CU, so setting a competitive priority fee is the primary mechanism for ensuring reliable transaction landing during congestion.

Open term
Programming Modellamport

Lamport

The smallest unit of SOL, named after Leslie Lamport. 1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 (10^9) lamports. All balances and transfers on Solana are denominated in lamports internally. The minimum balance for an account to be rent-exempt is calculated in lamports based on the account's data size.

Open term
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Network

Mainnet Beta

Solana's primary production cluster where real SOL and real economic activity occur; the "beta" designation reflects the network's ongoing protocol development despite being fully live since March 2020. It uses the same architecture as other clusters but with real validator stakes, live staking rewards, and permanent on-chain state. All production dApps, tokens, and NFTs exist on Mainnet Beta.

Open term
Network

Devnet

A persistent public Solana cluster intended for application development and testing, running the same software version as Mainnet Beta but with no real economic value. Devnet SOL can be freely airdropped via the CLI or faucet APIs, and the ledger may be reset periodically by Solana Labs. Developers use Devnet to test programs and integrations before deploying to Mainnet Beta.

Open term
Network

Testnet

A public Solana cluster used primarily by the Solana core team and validators to test new software releases, performance benchmarks, and network upgrades under real network conditions before they reach Mainnet Beta. Testnet SOL has no monetary value, and the ledger is reset more frequently than Devnet; it is less suitable for application development and more suited for validator operators validating their infrastructure.

Open term
Network

TPS (Transactions Per Second)

The rate at which a Solana cluster processes and commits transactions; Solana's theoretical maximum exceeds 65,000 TPS due to its parallel execution model, though real-world sustained throughput on Mainnet Beta typically ranges from 2,000–5,000 non-vote TPS under normal load. Vote transactions (used for consensus) make up a significant portion of all on-chain activity and are counted separately. High TPS is enabled by Proof of History timestamps, Sealevel parallel execution, and Gulf Stream mempool-less forwarding.

Open term