solana-core

What I do

• •Guide Solana transaction construction with versioned transactions, ALTs, and compute budget
• •Provide RPC provider selection and real-time data streaming patterns
• •Document solana-sdk and solana-client crate patterns for Rust engineers
• •Define error handling and retry strategies for Solana-specific failure modes

When to use me

Use this skill for any Solana blockchain project in Rust. Pair with solana-arb for trading/arbitrage systems, rust-pro for Rust engineering patterns, and perf-rust for performance optimization.

Solana Programming Model

• •Account ownership -- each account owned by exactly one program. Only the owner can modify data. System program owns SOL accounts; token program owns token accounts.
• •Rent exemption -- accounts must maintain minimum SOL balance (2 years rent) or be garbage collected. Always fund to rent-exempt minimum.
• •Program Derived Addresses (PDAs) -- deterministic addresses generated via Pubkey::find_program_address(&[seeds], &program_id). No private key exists; only the deriving program can sign for them.
• •Key difference from Ethereum -- code and state are separate. Programs are stateless; all state lives in accounts passed to instructions.

Transaction Construction

Always use Versioned (v0) transactions -- legacy transactions lack ALT support and hit account limits sooner. Use VersionedTransaction with MessageV0.

• •Address Lookup Tables (ALTs) -- use when >3 unique accounts. Compress 32-byte addresses to 1-byte indices. Must be active 1 slot after creation.
• •Compute Budget -- set_compute_unit_limit(units) and set_compute_unit_price(micro_lamports). Place compute budget instructions FIRST. Simulate to get actual usage, set limit to 1.2x actual.
• •Transaction size limit: 1232 bytes -- plan instruction packing carefully. Use ALTs aggressively to fit more instructions per transaction.

RPC Provider Selection

Need sub-50ms latency to validator?
  YES --> Self-hosted validator + Geyser plugin
  NO  --> Need real-time account streaming?
    YES --> Helius or Triton (Yellowstone gRPC)
    NO  --> Need Solana-specific APIs (priority fees, DAS)?
      YES --> Helius
      NO  --> Any provider (DRPC, QuickNode, Alchemy)

Real-Time Data Patterns

• •WebSocket: accountSubscribe (specific accounts), programSubscribe (all accounts owned by a program), logsSubscribe (transaction logs)
• •Yellowstone gRPC: managed (Helius/Triton) or self-hosted validator with Geyser plugin. Streams account updates, transactions, and slot notifications.
• •Reconnection: always implement reconnection with exponential backoff. WebSocket connections drop frequently on Solana RPC nodes. Cap backoff at 30 seconds, reset on successful reconnection.

solana-sdk / solana-client Patterns

ALWAYS use nonblocking RPC client -- solana_client::nonblocking::rpc_client::RpcClient. Using the sync RpcClient in async context blocks the tokio runtime.

• •Single signer: VersionedTransaction::try_new(message, &[&keypair])
• •Multi-signer: pass all signers in the slice
• •Always simulate_transaction before send_transaction -- catches errors without fees

Priority Fee Estimation

• •Query getRecentPrioritizationFees for accounts your transaction touches
• •Percentile selection: p50 normal, p75 important, p90+ urgent
• •Dynamic adjustment: increase when recent slot skip rate is high
• •Helius API: getPriorityFeeEstimate returns recommended fee tiers
• •Formula: compute_unit_price = (fee_lamports * 1_000_000) / compute_units

Error Handling

• •Retry on: BlockhashNotFound, transient network errors, rate limits (429)
• •Abort on: program errors (InstructionError), InsufficientFunds, invalid accounts
• •Blockhash management: fetch a fresh blockhash before each retry, not once upfront
• •Backoff: exponential with jitter, starting at 100ms, capping at 5 seconds

Anti-Patterns

Companion Skills