Coming into Solana, I honestly expected blockchain data to feel abstract and complicated, like something hidden behind layers of cryptography that would be hard to reason about.
In my head, I thought it would look nothing like the databases I was used to in Web2. But the reality surprised me. Once I started working with accounts and RPC calls, it began to feel less like “mystery tech” and more like a different kind of database, just one that’s public, distributed, and stricter about how data is accessed and modified.
The biggest “click” moment for me was realising that Solana is basically a public database where everything revolves around accounts. Instead of tables and rows, you have accounts and programs. Instead of backend logic controlling access, the network enforces rules through signatures and ownership. That shift, from “my server controls everything” to “the network enforces everything", really changed how I think about building applications.
One thing that surprised me was how direct RPC calls are. In Web2, I’m used to clean APIs that return structured JSON designed for my app. With Solana, you’re closer to the raw data.
You fetch account info, and it’s on you (or your program) to understand what those bytes mean. It’s powerful, but also a bit uncomfortable at first because there’s less abstraction.
At the same time, it made me appreciate how transparent everything is. Reading on-chain data feels like querying a system where nothing is hidden. There’s no “private backend” doing magic behind the scenes. What you see is what exists. That’s very different from traditional APIs where you only get what the server decides to expose.
That said, I’m still wrapping my head around a few things. Program-Derived Addresses (PDAs) are one. I understand the idea, but I haven’t fully internalised when and why to use them.
I also want to get more comfortable with structuring account data and designing programs that manage state properly.
Overall, this has been a mindset shift more than anything else. I’m not just learning new tools; I’m learning a new way to think about data, identity, and ownership. And I’m starting to see why that matters.
100DaysOfSolana
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