DEV Community: Rajat Kriplani

From punchlines to public keys

Rajat Kriplani — Sat, 02 May 2026 10:31:58 +0000

Let us be honest. Jumping from psychology textbooks and stand up comedy sets straight into Web3 architecture is a massive pivot. But my brain needed a new puzzle.

Enter Major League Hacking.

I recently jumped into their 100 Days of Solana challenge. It is basically a 100 day coding bootcamp that forces you to build actual decentralized apps instead of just reading about them.

The rundown

The structure: It is broken into manageable chunks. You start by generating wallets and reading on chain data. Eventually you are writing full smart contracts.
The stakes: Web3 has no "forgot password" button. If you lose your keys your work is gone. That is a terrifying but excellent motivator.
The pivot: I usually spend my days writing Python for my cognitive bias auditing suite. This switch feels like learning to walk all over again.

The daily rhythm is brutal but brilliant. You learn a concept one day and ship code the next. It is the perfect setup for anyone who learns by doing.

We are running right through July. If anyone else is currently fighting with a Solana CLI error please hit my line. We can figure it out together.

#100DaysOfSolana

Traditional Database vs Solana Accounts — Same Energy, Different Universe

Rajat Kriplani — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:54:39 +0000

Concept	Traditional Database	Solana Accounts
The Basic Unit	A row in a table	An account — a fixed chunk of on-chain storage tied to a public key
Who Owns It	The company running the database	The keypair holder. Period. No admin override. No "forgot password."
How You Prove Identity	Username + password (stored and verified by the server)	Cryptographic signature with your private key — math proves you, not a middleman
How Data is Stored	Flexible schemas, columns, data types — ALTER TABLE whenever you want	Raw bytes. You decide the structure. The chain just holds the blob.
Storage Cost	Usually a flat subscription or server cost	You pay rent in SOL proportional to how many bytes you store. No free lunch.
Who Can Write to It	Anyone the app gives write permission to	Only the account's owner program can modify data. Not even you directly — your keypair just authorizes it.
Deleting Data	`DELETE FROM table WHERE id = x`	Close the account, reclaim the rent. The data is gone, the SOL comes back.
Relationships Between Data	Foreign keys, JOINs, relational links	Accounts reference other accounts by their public key — no JOINs, just addresses
Who Controls the Schema	The DBA or backend developer	The program (smart contract) that owns the account defines what the bytes mean
Availability	Depends on your infra — can go down	Global, always-on, no downtime, no region failover needed
Access Control	Role-based (admin, read-only, write, etc.)	Binary — you either have the private key or you don't. No roles, no ACLs.
Querying Data	SQL — `SELECT * FROM users WHERE ...`	Fetch by public key, or use getProgramAccounts to filter by data layout
Transaction Model	ACID transactions, rollbacks, savepoints	Atomic transactions — everything succeeds or nothing does. No partial writes.
Who Hosts It	You, AWS, GCP, or a database provider	Every validator on the Solana network simultaneously
Mutability	Mutable by default — update anytime	Mutable or immutable — programs can be marked non-upgradeable (trustless by design)
The "Table" Equivalent	A table with rows of the same shape	Accounts owned by the same program — same data layout, different addresses
Cost to Read	Usually free (infra cost aside)	Free — reading accounts costs no SOL
Backups	Your problem (snapshots, replication)	The blockchain is the backup — replicated across thousands of validators

100daysofsolana

Week 1 of #100DaysOfSolana — here's what I actually built:

Rajat Kriplani — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:07:16 +0000

Day 1: Generated my first keypair on the CLI and airdropped devnet SOL to it. Seeing Balance: 5 SOL hit different when you know you own that address cryptographically — no company in between.

Day 2: Built a persistent wallet that saves to wallet.json and reads balance on every run. Simple script, but it made the keypair concept click in a way docs never could.

Day 3: Checked balances via the Solana CLI. The smallest unit is named after solana's co-founder, which is a nice detail.

Day 4: Built a React app that detects browser wallets and connects to Phantom. Seeing my own wallet address render live on localhost felt like the Web2 → Web3 bridge finally made sense.

100DaysOfSolana #Solana #Web3 #LearnInPublic

Who Are You, Actually? Identity on Solana Explained for Web2 Devs

Rajat Kriplani — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:59:16 +0000

I have got a task for you! Name every place your "identity" lives online right now. There's your Gmail. Your GitHub. Your LinkedIn. Your bank's app. Your Netflix. Your Spotify. Each one has a username, a password, (well now a days almost everyone sign-in using their gmail account) and a company sitting between you and your own account like a bouncer who technically works for someone else.

Now here's the uncomfortable truth: none of those identities are yours. They're licenses. Revocable ones. Welcome to the first real mind-shift of blockchain development.

The Web2 Identity Problem

In Web2, your identity is basically a row in someone else's database. You sign up, they store your credentials, and they hand you a session cookie that says "yep, this is them." It works fine, until it doesn't. Accounts get banned. Companies get acquired. Servers go down. You get locked out of five years of data because you forgot which email you used.

The system isn't broken. It was just built for a world where someone always has to be in charge. Solana was built for a different world.

Enter: The Keypair

On Solana, your identity isn't a row in a database. It's a cryptographic keypair, two mathematically linked keys that work together like a lock and a key that were born together.

Public key = your address. Share it everywhere. It's how people find you, send you tokens, and reference your account on-chain.
Private key = your proof of ownership. Never share it. It's the only thing that can authorize transactions from your account.

If you've ever set up SSH access to a server, this will click immediately. You generate a key pair, put the public key on the server, and authenticate by proving you hold the private key, without ever sending the private key itself. Solana works the exact same way, except the "server" is every node in a global network, and your keypair is your identity everywhere on it, and no integrations required.

Your Address Is Not a Username

Here's where it gets interesting. A Solana address looks something like this:
7xKXtg2CW87d97TXJSDpbD5jBkheTqA83TZRuJosgHU
That's not a username someone assigned you. That's a 32-byte Ed25519 public key encoded in Base58 — a format specifically chosen to remove characters that look alike (no 0 vs O, no I vs l). It was designed to be copy-pasteable by humans, which is a surprisingly thoughtful detail.
The bigger point: no company owns that string. No admin can reassign it. No one can lock you out of it. The only way to "own" that account is to hold the private key.

Why This Is Bigger Than a Login

On-chain identity isn't just a cooler way to log in. It's the foundation for everything else.
Token ownership? Tied to your keypair. Governance votes? Signed by your keypair. NFTs, program interactions, DeFi positions, reputation systems? All of it traces back to that one cryptographic identity, and it works across every app on Solana without anyone's permission, without OAuth, without "Sign in with Google." One keypair. Every application. No middleman.