Solana Development

Solana development means writing on-chain programs (the Solana term for smart contracts) and the client code that talks to them. Most programs are written in Rust using the Anchor framework, which handles a lot of the boilerplate around account validation and serialization. Clients are usually TypeScript or React apps using the Solana web3.js or Anchor client libraries.

This is firmly adult territory. Prerequisites are real: solid programming experience, comfort with Rust (or willingness to learn it alongside Solana), and a working mental model of how blockchains, wallets, transactions, and public-key cryptography fit together. Solana's account model is meaningfully different from Ethereum's, so prior EVM experience helps but doesn't transfer cleanly.

Start with the Solana Cookbook and the official Anchor book, then build on devnet where transactions are free. A reasonable first project is a token-vesting program or an escrow — small enough to finish, but covers accounts, PDAs (program-derived addresses), and cross-program invocation. Once that clicks, try cloning a small piece of a real protocol and reading its source.

The big stumbling blocks are the account model (every piece of state must be passed in explicitly), rent and account sizing, and writing tests that exercise the full transaction lifecycle. You're making progress when you can sketch the account layout for a new feature before writing code, debug a failed transaction from its logs, and have a strong opinion on when to use a PDA versus a keypair-owned account.