Solana Accounts and Lamports Exercise (Hands-On)

Create wallets, transfer lamports, inspect account layout, and learn rent thresholds to build confidence with Solana accounts using the CLI.

This exercise helps you explore the basics of Solana's account system and lamports. You’ll create wallets, transfer funds, examine how rent works, and inspect the structure of an account.

These operations are foundational for interacting with on-chain programs.

You don’t need to understand everything about programs yet. This is all about getting comfortable with how accounts and transfers work at the CLI level.

What You’ll Practice

By the end of this exercise, you will:

Step-by-Step Exercise

Step 1: Create Two Wallets

Generate two keypairs and save them as separate files.

solana-keygen new --outfile wallet1.json
solana-keygen new --outfile wallet2.json

Step 2: Check Wallet Balances

Use the --keypair flag to check balances of both wallets.

solana balance --keypair wallet1.json
solana balance --keypair wallet2.json

Step 3: Airdrop to Wallet 1

Request 2 SOL to the first wallet on devnet.

solana airdrop 2 --keypair wallet1.json
solana balance --keypair wallet1.json

Step 4: Transfer Lamports to Wallet 2

Send 0.01 SOL (10,000,000 lamports) to wallet2 using its public key.

solana transfer ADDRESS_2 10000000 --from wallet1.json --allow-unfunded-recipient

Step 5: Confirm Transfer

Verify that the balances are updated as expected.

solana balance --keypair wallet1.json
solana balance --keypair wallet2.json

Step 6: Inspect Account Layout

Use the solana account command to see internal fields like owner, lamports, and rent status.

solana account ADDRESS_2

Rent and Minimum Balance

Accounts on Solana either:

Stay rent-exempt by holding a minimum balance
Or lose balance over time through rent fees

To check the rent-exempt threshold for an empty account:

solana rent 0

For most accounts used by smart contracts, it is best to make them rent-exempt to avoid unexpected deletion.

Additional Practice Ideas

Try sending lamports without the --allow-unfunded-recipient flag
Airdrop to wallet2 directly and then inspect its account layout
Run solana account on a known public account (e.g. SPL Token Mint) and study the fields

Feel free to explore variations. Small tweaks help you deeply understand Solana’s account system.

Common Pitfalls

Forgetting --keypair The CLI will default to the wallet in ~/.config/solana/id.json if no keypair is provided, which can lead to using the wrong wallet.

Mixing up SOL and lamports Solana CLI expects lamports in most commands. 1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 lamports.

Transfer fails without --allow-unfunded-recipient If the receiving account has never existed before, Solana requires this flag to cover rent and create the account.

Summary

In this exercise, you:

Created two Solana wallets
Funded one and transferred lamports to the other
Used CLI commands to inspect balances and accounts
Learned how rent and lamport units affect account health

These are the basic CLI skills every Solana developer should know before deploying or interacting with smart contracts.