Introduction
In recent years, Web3 and blockchain have moved far beyond investment
hype and have become part of real-world software development.\
However, many tutorials jump straight into code without explaining the
mental model required to build applications correctly on a
blockchain.
Before writing any Rust code or using frameworks like Anchor, it is
essential to understand:
- What Web3 really means for developers\
- How blockchains work under the hood\
- What smart contracts are and how Solana treats this concept\
- Why Solana's architecture is fundamentally different
This article is fully conceptual.\
In the next part, we will move into practice with environment setup and
your first Solana program.
What Web3 Really Means for Developers
For developers, Web3 is not about speculation or tokens.\
It is about who controls the state of the application.
In traditional applications:
- The backend controls the database\
- The company defines the rules\
- Users must trust the server
In Web3:
- Critical application state lives on a public blockchain\
- Rules are enforced by on-chain code\
- Anyone can verify how the system behaves
User interfaces, APIs, and indexers still exist, but they become
support layers, not the source of truth.
This architectural shift is what enables truly decentralized
applications.
Blockchain as a Distributed State Machine
A technical way to view a blockchain is as a global, distributed state
machine.
Each transaction:
- Reads the current state\
- Executes deterministic logic\
- Produces a new state validated by the network
All validators execute the same logic and reach the same result,
ensuring the ledger remains immutable and verifiable.
Unlike traditional databases, you cannot:
- Freely update records\
- Delete historical data\
- Manually fix inconsistencies
Every change must happen through a valid, signed, and verified
transaction.
Smart Contracts vs Programs on Solana
On many blockchains, such as Ethereum, smart contracts:
- Contain code\
- Store their own state
Solana uses a different model.
Smart contracts are called programs, and they:
- Contain only logic\
- Do not store state internally
All persistent data lives in separate structures called Accounts.
Programs receive these accounts as inputs, validate them, and modify
their data when allowed.
This separation between:
- Code (programs)\
- Data (accounts)
is one of Solana's most important architectural differences and strongly
affects application design.
Why Solana Is Architecturally Different
Solana was designed around parallel transaction execution.
To make this possible, the network must know in advance:
- Which accounts a transaction will read\
- Which accounts a transaction will write
If two transactions do not touch the same accounts, they can run at the
same time.
This model:
- Greatly increases throughput\
- Requires developers to explicitly declare all data dependencies
That is why, when writing Solana programs, every account involved in an
instruction must be listed explicitly.
Nothing is accessed implicitly.
The Role of Accounts in Application Design
Accounts are the real database of Solana.
They can store:
- Custom data structures\
- Token balances\
- NFT metadata\
- Protocol configuration
Each account has:
- An address\
- An owner (usually a program)\
- Persistent binary data
A program can only modify accounts that it owns.
This creates a very explicit and predictable security model.
For developers, this means application design often starts with
account design, not with function logic.
What Anchor Is and Why It Matters
Developing directly on Solana's runtime in Rust is possible, but
extremely verbose.
Anchor is a framework that:
- Automates data serialization\
- Validates accounts automatically\
- Reduces repetitive boilerplate\
- Integrates TypeScript testing
With Anchor, developers describe:
- Which accounts an instruction expects\
- Which constraints must be enforced
And the framework generates most of the validation logic.
This allows developers to focus on protocol logic instead of low-level
runtime details.
For this reason, most professional Solana projects today use Anchor.
What You Should Understand Before Writing Code
Before moving into hands-on development, it is important to understand
that:
- Programs do not store state\
- Accounts are the actual storage layer\
- Transactions must declare all accounts they use\
- Execution is deterministic and globally validated\
- Compute costs always matter
These principles explain why Solana development feels different from
both Web2 systems and EVM-based blockchains.
With the correct mental model, the code will stop feeling strange and
start making sense.
Next Step: Hands-On Development
In the next article of this series, we will move into practice:
- Setting up the full development environment\
- Creating a local development wallet\
- Initializing an Anchor project\
- Implementing a simple counter program using a PDA\
- Testing everything locally with
solana-test-validator
The goal is to move directly from theory into a real professional
development workflow.
Top comments (1)
Great stuff! Thank you for sharing.