Orivions / Solana glossary

Solana glossary

Plain-English definitions of the terms that come up when you build, audit and launch on Solana, or hire a team to do it. Short enough to quote, with links to our deeper guides.

Account

The unit of storage on Solana. Every piece of state, including programs, token balances and user data, lives in an account with an owner program, a balance in lamports and a data field.

Anchor

The most widely used framework for writing Solana programs in Rust. It generates account validation, serialization and an IDL from declarative code, which speeds up development and prevents common mistakes. Anchor vs native Rust →

Audit (smart contract audit)

An independent security review of a program at a specific commit, usually by a specialised firm, that reports vulnerabilities and recommendations before launch. It reduces risk but does not guarantee security. How to choose an auditor →

Bug bounty

A public program that pays security researchers for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities in deployed code. It complements, rather than replaces, an audit.

Compute units (CU)

The measure of computation a Solana transaction may use. Each transaction has a compute budget, and efficient programs use fewer compute units, which can lower priority fees and improve composability.

CPI (cross-program invocation)

A call from one Solana program to another within the same transaction, for example a DeFi program calling the Token Program to move tokens. Invoking a program ID supplied by the caller without checking it is a classic vulnerability.

Discriminator

A short prefix stored at the start of an account or instruction that identifies its type. Anchor adds discriminators automatically to prevent one account type from being passed in place of another.

Freeze authority

The key that can freeze token accounts of a given mint, preventing transfers. Projects that do not need it usually revoke it so users can trust their balances cannot be frozen.

IDL (interface description language)

A machine-readable description of a program’s instructions and accounts, generated by Anchor, that lets wallets, explorers and client libraries interact with the program.

Indexer

An off-chain service that reads Solana transactions and accounts and stores them in a queryable database, so applications can show history and aggregated data quickly.

KOL (key opinion leader)

A creator or influencer with a trusted audience in a crypto community. KOL campaigns pay these creators to present a project; reputable ones disclose paid promotion. Choosing a marketing agency →

Lamport

The smallest unit of SOL. One SOL equals one billion lamports.

Mint authority

The key allowed to create new tokens of a given mint. Revoking it fixes the token supply permanently.

Multisig

A wallet that requires approval from several signers before executing a transaction. On Solana, multisigs commonly hold program upgrade authorities and treasury funds instead of a single key.

Native Rust program

A Solana program written without the Anchor framework, handling account parsing and validation by hand. It offers more control over compute and account layout at the cost of more code to write and review.

PDA (program derived address)

An address derived deterministically from seeds and a program ID that has no private key, so only that program can sign for it. PDAs are used to store program-owned state and hold assets.

Priority fee

An optional extra fee, priced per compute unit, that makes a transaction more likely to be included quickly when the network is busy.

Program

Solana’s term for a smart contract: executable code deployed to an account. Programs are stateless; they read and write data stored in separate accounts.

Rent

The SOL balance an account must hold to stay on-chain, proportional to its data size. Accounts holding at least the rent-exempt minimum are never charged, and the deposit is returned when the account is closed.

RPC node

A server that applications use to read Solana data and submit transactions. Production apps usually rely on paid RPC providers and configure a fallback.

SPL token

A fungible or non-fungible token created with the Solana Program Library Token Program or its successor, Token-2022, which adds extensions such as transfer fees and confidential transfers.

Success fee

A fee paid only when an engagement is completed. On Orivions, providers pay a flat 10% success fee on completed engagements and clients pay nothing.

Upgrade authority

The key allowed to replace a deployed program’s code. Best practice is to place it in a multisig, put upgrades behind a timelock, or remove it to make the program immutable. Pre-launch security checklist →

Verifiable build

A reproducible build that lets anyone confirm the program deployed on-chain was compiled from a specific public commit of its source code.

Verified provider (Orivions)

A service company on Orivions whose identity, portfolio, services and price ranges were checked by a person at Orivions before it was marked Verified.