I just finished my second week of the #100DaysOfSolana challenge, and my brain feels like it’s been rewired. Coming from a traditional software background, I thought a blockchain was just a slow database. I was wrong.
The "Aha!" Moment: Everything is an Account
The biggest thing that clicked for me this week was the Account Model. In the apps I usually build, data lives in a private database (like MongoDB) and the code lives on a server. On Solana, everything—your wallet, your data, and even the "smart contract" code—is an account sitting on a giant, public ledger.
What Surprised Me
I spent today comparing Solana accounts to traditional databases. Here are the three things that shocked me most:
- Public by Default: I can take my wallet address, throw it into a website like the Solana Explorer, and see every single transaction I’ve ever made. There’s no "admin password" needed to see the data—it’s just there.
- Rent is Real: You actually have to pay a small "security deposit" in SOL to store data on the blockchain. If you want to store more bytes, you pay more. The cool part? If you delete the data, you get your money back.
- The "Ghost" Transaction: I learned the hard way that just because a website says "Success" doesn't mean your money has arrived yet. You have to wait for the network to "finalize" the transaction.
My Terminal Adventures
I spent a lot of time in the terminal this week. One of the most satisfying moments was finally seeing my balance update after a few failed airdrops:
# Checking my "identity" on the devnet
solana account $(solana address)
# The result:
Public Key: 5bsSMz6oc4gHp5BkBFSR9HK4mn7NBTimvsgSL9soXktj
Balance: 1.5 SOL
Owner: 11111111111111111111111111111111 (System Program)
Executable: false
What's Next?
I’m still wrapping my head around how different programs talk to each other without using "JOIN" commands like in SQL. It feels like learning to walk again, but in a world where everything is transparent and decentralized.
Next week, I’m diving deeper into building dashboards that read this data in real-time!
