I always have the thrill and wish for learning and experimenting with the web3 . Scattered tutorial and knowledge over different platform has not contributed significantly in my knowledge building .
So , i decides to enroll and go along with #100DaysOfSolana to bring some sort of structured knowledge in the sector of web3 . Till now , this journey gave me a true eureka moment for understanding different concepts and terminology that I’d heard before but never fully grasped. Let me share three breakthroughs that changed how I see Web3.
1. Public Key vs. Private Key – Not Just a Username and Password
The public key is what others see. They use it to send you crypto or verify that a transaction came from your wallet. In Web2 terms, it’s like a username. But here’s the nuance: Web3 is pseudonymous, not fully anonymous. Your public key is visible on the ledger, but your real-world identity isn’t attached unless you connect it yourself.
The private key, on the other hand, is yours alone. You use it to sign transactions – proving you own the wallet without revealing the key itself. It’s similar to a Web2 password, but with one huge difference: there’s no “forgot password” option. Lose your private key, lose your funds forever. That’s why people write it down on paper or use hardware wallets. This clarity was my first big aha moment.
2. Devnet – The Playground Before the Real Game
For a long time, I wondered: how can developers experiment with cryptocurrency when it has real value and trades live? That confusion vanished when I discovered Solana Devnet.
On devnet, you can request fake SOL for free using a faucet. You can deploy smart contracts, send transactions, and make mistakes without losing real money. It’s a sandbox. Once your code works on devnet, you test again on testnet, and only then do you go to mainnet – the live blockchain. Now I understand that almost every serious blockchain project starts its life on a devnet or testnet. This made programming with crypto feel safe and exciting.
3. Integers, Not Floats – Avoiding the Rounding Nightmare
Another question haunted me: why do blockchains use integers (like lamports for SOL or satoshis for Bitcoin) instead of floating-point numbers?
The answer clicked when I thought about rounding errors. Different machines round floating-point numbers differently – even by tiny amounts. On a public ledger where thousands of nodes must agree on every balance, those tiny differences would break consensus. One node might see 0.1 + 0.2 = 0.30000000000000004, while another sees a slightly different value. Using integers (e.g., 300,000 lamports) guarantees every node calculates exactly the same result. This small design choice is actually a pillar of trust in blockchain.
So , in solana we are using the things of lamports and sol, while the result are being shown in the sol , the underlying calculation all are performed in lamports . For conversion , 1 SOL is always equal to 1,000,000,000 (one billion) Lamports.
Final Thoughts
These eureka moments didn’t come easily . It was with the passion curiosity , dareness to ask the silly question , contigency in the learning , learning from the mistake and resistace to break the thing along making it .
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