Dictionary

A list of commonly used terms on Solana and how they map to Ethereum
Term Description
Associated token account Wallet’s default address for the holdings for a certain token.
ATA Associated token account.
Confirmed Commitment level which indicates that 2/3 of the active stake has voted on a block.
Epoch Length of time equal to 432,00 slots (~2 days) used for scheduling leaders, warming up stake, etc.
Finalized Commitment level which indicates that 2/3 of the active stake has finalized a block.
Fee payer The first account which signed a Solana transaction, similar to msg.sender.
Instruction Represents a call to an on-chain program. Solana transactions can contain one or more instructions.
Lamport The smallest unit of SOL. Similar to Ethereum’s “wei” unit.
Leader Validator whose turn it is to produce a block.
Native program Solana program which is pre-compiled, examples include the System, Stake, and Vote programs.
On-chain program Solana’s name for smart contracts.
Processed Commitment level which can be used to interact with the most recently produced block.
PDA Program derived account.
Program derived account Special account who’s address is derived from a program id.
Program ID Address of a deployed on-chain program.
Slot Length of time (~500ms) in which a designated leader may optionally produce a block.
SOL The native token of Solana’s blockchain. Similar to ETH on Ethereum.
SPL Solana program library, a collection of reference programs similar to Open Zeppelin.
SPL token The ERC20 equivalent on Solana. Each SPL token uses the same deployed SPL Token program.
Syscall Similar to Ethereum’s precompiles.
System program Native program which is responsible for SOL transfers and account allocation.
Sysvar Special Solana account which stores blockchain context like current slot or epoch.
Transaction Signed list of instructions that are executed atomically on Solana.

Last modified May 8, 2021: new structure (755eb64)