Solana terminology glossary
Definitions written for developers learning Solana after working on traditional backends or other chains. Updated when release notes change behavior.
- Account
- A data record on Solana that holds lamports and/or arbitrary byte data. Programs are stateless; persistent state lives in accounts they own or reference. Unlike a file on disk, an account has an owner program that alone may modify its data.
- Anchor
- A Rust framework that generates boilerplate for Solana programs: account validation macros, IDL files, and TypeScript clients. Pulse FieldBase workshops standardize on Anchor for first projects because tests read closer to the domain logic.
- Commitment level
- How finalized a block must be before a client treats a transaction as confirmed. Processed is fastest; finalized is safest for production reads. Local development usually uses confirmed.
- Devnet
- A public Solana cluster for development. Tokens have no real value. Use devnet when you need realistic network latency but not mainnet fees or permanence.
- Cross-program invocation (CPI)
- When one on-chain program calls another during a single transaction. Ordering and signer privileges matter — a common source of subtle bugs in first dApps.
- Instruction
- The smallest unit of work sent to a program. A transaction bundles one or more instructions, each targeting a program ID with serialized argument data and a list of accounts.
- Program
- Deployed bytecode identified by a public key. Programs execute instructions but do not store long-lived state internally — state sits in separate accounts.
- Program-derived address (PDA)
- An account address derived from a program ID and seed strings, with no corresponding private key. Programs sign for PDAs using bump seeds. Used for vaults, metadata, and authority records.
- Rent
- A storage cost measured in lamports. Accounts holding data above a minimum balance are rent-exempt and persist indefinitely. Smaller accounts may be reclaimed if rent is not maintained.
- solana-test-validator
- A local binary that simulates a Solana cluster on your machine. Faster iteration than devnet and resets cleanly between experiments.
- Transaction
- A signed packet of instructions submitted to the cluster. All instructions succeed or the entire transaction rolls back — there is no partial commit within one transaction.
Want these definitions in print? Workshop participants receive a bound booklet. Ask about standalone copies or browse longer guides that expand on each term.