Glossary of Terms
Common terms and definitions for Solana development and blockchain security.
Account
A data structure on Solana that stores information and can execute transactions. All accounts are assigned to programs.
Anchor
A popular framework for building Solana programs in Rust. Provides utilities for account validation and instruction handling.
Audit
A comprehensive security review of smart contract code to identify vulnerabilities and best practice violations.
Burn
Permanently removing tokens from circulation by sending them to an inaccessible address.
Candlestick
A chart format showing opening, closing, high, and low prices for a time period.
CPI (Cross-Program Invocation)
When one Solana program calls another program, enabling composability.
DeFi
Decentralized Finance - financial services running on blockchain without intermediaries.
Devnet
Solana's development network for testing before deploying to mainnet.
Flash Loan
A uncollateralized loan that must be repaid within the same transaction.
Frontrunning
An attack where a malicious actor places their transaction ahead of another to gain advantage.
Gas
Fees paid for transaction processing. On Solana, measured in lamports.
Governance
Process for making decisions about a protocol's future through community voting.
Impermanent Loss
Potential loss for liquidity providers when asset prices diverge significantly.
Instruction
A single operation in a Solana transaction.
Lamport
The smallest unit of SOL. 1 SOL = 1 billion lamports.
Liquidity
The ease with which an asset can be bought or sold without affecting its price.
Mainnet
Solana's main production network where real transactions occur.
Mint
The authority that controls the supply of a specific SPL token.
NFT
Non-fungible token - a unique digital asset on the blockchain.
Oracle
A service that provides off-chain data to smart contracts.
PDA (Program Derived Address)
An address deterministically generated from a program and seeds.
Rent
Storage fees required to maintain account data on Solana.
RPC
Remote Procedure Call - an endpoint for interacting with the Solana network.
Slippage
The difference between expected and actual price when executing a large trade.
Smart Contract
Self-executing code on the blockchain that automatically enforces agreements.
SOL
The native token of the Solana blockchain.
SPL
Solana Program Library - standard for fungible and non-fungible tokens.
Signer
An entity that authorizes a transaction with their private key.
Reentrancy
An attack where a contract is called multiple times before state is updated.
Vulnerability
A flaw in code that could be exploited to compromise security or functionality.