09/12/2021

Solana Development #1

Background: a few months ago I tried to set up a Solana dev environment and go through their hello world example and I couldn't get anything to work. Today I'm going to try once again to just get something to work. Hopefully this time goes better!

Getting Started

First things first, I need to install Solana:

➜ sh -c "$(curl -sSfL https://release.solana.com/v1.7.11/install)"

➜ solana --version
solana-cli 1.7.11

I already have rust installed, which will also be a prerequisite before we can do anything (install instructions can be found here).

➜ rustc --version
rustc 1.55.0

Getting Set Up With Solana Devnet

I stumbled onto this great article which, among other useful things, walks through the steps to set up your local environment on the solana devnet and create a devnet wallet.

So following that, I'm going to make Solana devnet my default url:

solana config set --url https://api.devnet.solana.com

And then I'm going to copy the steps from that article to generate a devnet wallet for testing purposes:

➜ solana-keygen new --outfile ~/.config/solana/devnet.json

I'm also going to make devnet my default keypair:

solana config set --keypair ~/.config/solana/devnet.json

Adding Funds to your Devnet Wallet

Now we can try adding funds to the devnet wallet, again just following the steps outlined in that article:

➜ solana balance
0 SOL

➜ solana airdrop 10
Requesting airdrop of 10 SOL

Signature: 3wmPsXM4Ms3nsRFGGDzZQeNHuhmr6gC3tSN7rGVvBuiUCFscB1qR4MsVfLZVXnXH5bopntQ63BbQKFGdoeW8Et5V

10 SOL

➜ solana balance
10 SOL

Conclussion

I'm currently still in the "I literally have no clue what I'm doing" phase of Solana/blockchain development, which makes this exciting!

Continue to part 2