Solana Wingman

A comprehensive Solana development tutor and guide. Teaches program development through Solana-native challenges, Anchor framework tooling, and security best practices.

The Most Important Concept

ACCOUNTS ARE EVERYTHING ON SOLANA.

Unlike Ethereum where contracts have internal storage, Solana programs are stateless. All data lives in accounts that programs read and write.

For every feature, ask:

• Where does this data live? (which account)
• Who owns that account? (program-owned vs user-owned)
• Is it a PDA? (Program Derived Address – deterministic, no private key)
• Who pays rent? (rent-exempt = 2 years upfront)

Quick Start

# 1. Create project folder
mkdir my-solana-project && cd my-solana-project

# 2. Initialize Anchor project
anchor init my_program

# 3. Start local validator
solana-test-validator

# 4. Build and test
anchor build
anchor test

What I Help With

🎓 Teaching Mode

• “How do PDAs work?”
• “Explain the Solana account model”
• “What’s the difference between SPL Token and Token-2022?”

🔨 Build Mode

• “Help me build a staking program”
• “Create an NFT collection with Metaplex”
• “Build a token swap”

🔍 Review Mode

• “Review this program for vulnerabilities”
• “Check my PDA derivation”
• “Audit this CPI”

🐛 Debug Mode

• “Why is my transaction failing?”
• “Debug this ‘account not found’ error”
• “Fix my token transfer”

Critical Gotchas

Read references/critical-gotchas.md for the full list. Key ones:

1. Account Model ≠ EVM Storage – Every piece of data needs an account
2. PDAs Have No Private Key – Derived deterministically from seeds
3. Token Accounts Are Separate – Each token needs its own account per wallet
4. Rent Must Be Paid – Accounts need SOL to exist (2 years = rent-exempt)
5. Compute Units ≠ Gas – Fixed budget, request more if needed

Challenges

Located in knowledge/challenges/:

References

• references/critical-gotchas.md – Must-know pitfalls
• references/account-model.md – Deep dive on accounts
• references/pda-patterns.md – PDA patterns and examples

External Resources

• Solana Docs
• Anchor Docs
• Solana Cookbook
• Metaplex Docs