Week 2 of #100DaysOfSolana: When “Public Database” Finally Clicked

LittleNezhaMin — Sat, 02 May 2026 14:09:07 +0000

After two weeks building on Solana, I feel like my mental model of “blockchain” has completely changed.

Before this, I used to think blockchain data was something abstract, complex, and hard to access. Something like a black box where transactions go in, and magic comes out.

Reality?
It’s surprisingly simple… and surprisingly different.
🧱 What I Expected vs Reality
Coming from a fullstack background (PHP, Go, APIs, databases), I expected:

Tables
Queries (SELECT, JOIN, WHERE)
Structured schemas

But on Solana, there are no tables.

Instead:

Accounts = your data
Programs = your logic
RPC = your API

At first, this felt strange.

But once I reframed it like this:

Solana = a giant public database you can read from

Things started to make sense.

⸻

⚡ The Moment It Clicked

The biggest “aha” moment came when I fetched:

Balance of an address
Recent transactions

Using just an RPC call.
No authentication.
No backend.
No database setup.
Just:

const balance = await rpc.getBalance(address).send();

That’s it.
At that moment, it clicked:
This is just a read-only API… but global and trustless.
🧩 What Surprised Me Most

Same Code, Different Network = Completely Different Data

When I compared devnet vs mainnet, I got:

Devnet → 5 SOL + transactions (from testing)
Mainnet → 0 SOL + no activity

Same address. Same code.

Completely different reality.

This felt exactly like:

Devnet = staging DB
Mainnet = production DB

But with real money involved.

Everything is Public

In Web2:

You need auth
You need permission
You need APIs

In Solana:

You can read anything
Anytime
From anywhere

That’s powerful… and a bit scary 😅

RPC Feels Like an API, But It’s Not Quite the Same

Working with Solana RPC feels familiar:

Request → Response
JSON data
Async calls

But the mindset is different:

You’re not querying your backend
You’re querying a shared global state

That changes how you think about data completely.
🚧 What I’m Still Confused About

A few things I’m still figuring out:

How to write data safely (transactions, signing, fees)
How programs (smart contracts) actually store structured data
Best practices for building real apps on top of accounts

Reading data feels easy.

Writing data feels like the next big challenge.
🚀 What I Want to Learn Next

Next, I want to focus on:

Sending transactions
Interacting with programs
Building a real dApp with a wallet (Phantom, etc.)
Moving from “read-only” → “read + write”

⸻

Final Thoughts

Week 2 made one thing clear:

Blockchain isn’t magic.
It’s just a different way of structuring and accessing data.

And once that clicks…

Everything becomes a lot more approachable.

⸻

If you’re also doing #100DaysOfSolana, I’d love to connect and see what you’re building 🚀

Week 2 of #100DaysOfSolana: When “Public Database” Finally Clicked After two weeks building on Solana, I feel like my mental model of “blockchain” has completely changed. Before this, I used to think blockchain data was something abstract, complex, and h

LittleNezhaMin — Sat, 02 May 2026 13:59:49 +0000

DEV Community: LittleNezhaMin

Week 2 of #100DaysOfSolana: When “Public Database” Finally Clicked

Week 2 of #100DaysOfSolana: When “Public Database” Finally Clicked After two weeks building on Solana, I feel like my mental model of “blockchain” has completely changed. Before this, I used to think blockchain data was something abstract, complex, and h