Guides
Developer Guides
These guides are intended for developers new to Solana. They contain more detail than the documentation — instead of just showing you the structure of RPC calls, we cover optimization and how to use them to build simple programs. We also go over common problems new developers face when working with Solana. They are grouped by how much Solana you already know: start at the top and work down, or jump straight to the track that matches you.
Starter
No Solana experience needed, and best read in order. Each one takes a single read method end to end — the request you send, the response fields that matter, and how to keep it cheap.
getAccountInfo Solana Developer GuidegetAccountInfoRead a single Solana account with getAccountInfo: response fields, encoding trade-offs, parsing program-specific data, and cutting bandwidth costs. 20 min read getMultipleAccounts Solana Developer GuidegetMultipleAccountsBatch up to 255 Solana account reads into one getMultipleAccounts request, handle missing accounts safely, and cut bandwidth with dataSlice. Measured before and after. 20 min read getProgramAccounts Solana Developer GuidegetProgramAccountsFetch all accounts a Solana program owns with getProgramAccounts, then cut a 10 GB scan to kilobytes with memcmp filters, changedSinceSlot, and dataSlice. 45 min read
Intermediate
Now that you've learned the three key RPC calls, we'll cover specialized methods that are more suitable in specific contexts. We'll also build some simple applications around them.
getBalance Solana Developer GuidegetBalanceRead a Solana account balance with getBalance from the browser, using Shield keys that keep your account key out of the frontend. Includes a wallet connector in plain JavaScript. 31 min read getTokenAccountsByOwner Solana Developer GuidegetTokenAccountsByOwner RugCheck · getTokenReportSummaryFetch every token account a Solana wallet owns with getTokenAccountsByOwner, decode mints and balances by slicing bytes, and score the token with RugCheck. 34 min read getTokenLargestAccounts Solana Developer GuidegetTokenLargestAccounts RugCheck · getTokenReportFetch the 20 largest holders of a Solana token with getTokenLargestAccounts, then get the same list, owning wallets included, from a RugCheck token report. 20 min read Solana Holder Analysis with getTokenAccountsCount Developer GuidegetTokenAccountsCountIn this guide, we will learn how to use getTokenAccountsCount and getTokenLargestAccounts to make a simple "holder analysis" frontend. The frontend will display the total number of holders, as well as the 20 biggest ones. This is a useful thing to do in many contexts, like trading terminals where users would want to know how healthy a token's distribution is. 34 min read sendTransaction Solana Developer GuidesendTransactionSend SOL from a connected wallet: build the transfer in the browser, have the wallet sign it, and submit the signed bytes with sendTransaction. 40 min read getPriorityFeeEstimate Solana Developer GuidegetPriorityFeeEstimateSet an accurate Solana priority fee: size the compute unit limit from a simulation, then price it with getPriorityFeeEstimate before you sign and send. 25 min read Confirm a Solana Transaction over a WebSocketsignatureSubscribeConfirm a Solana transaction with signatureSubscribe: subscribe before you submit, run the socket in a Web Worker, and fall back to getSignatureStatuses. 50 min read getBlock Solana Developer GuidegetBlockBuild an application that lists Solana blocks as the chain produces them. Start by fetching one block with getBlock, then improve upon your application using Yellowstone-over-websockets ("Yellowsockets"). 34 min read
Advanced
This is where we'll cover speculative features (that haven't hit Solana mainnet yet), or guides that cover complex or unusual topics.