Tracking smart money and "whale" activity on Solana can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. While there are many paid tools, building your own lightweight monitor is not only a great way to learn Web3 development but also gives you full control over your data.
In this post, I’ll show you how I built a Solana Transaction Monitor using Python, aiogram for Telegram alerts, and solana/solders for blockchain interaction.
Why Build This?
Solana is incredibly fast, and manual monitoring is impossible. I needed a tool that:
Works in real-time using WebSocket streams.
Filters the noise by monitoring only specific high-value wallets.
Pushes alerts directly to Telegram, so I never miss a significant trade.
The Architecture
The project is built to be lightweight and efficient:
Python: Core logic.
aiogram 3.x: Asynchronous framework for Telegram bot communication.
Solana/Solders: Powerful libraries to interact with the Solana JSON-RPC API and WebSocket subscriptions.
Key Logic
The heart of the bot is the monitor_wallet function. Instead of constantly polling the API (which is slow and inefficient), we use a WebSocket subscription:
Python
async with connect("wss://api.mainnet-beta.solana.com") as websocket:
await websocket.account_subscribe(pubkey)
# ... logic to calculate balance diff and send telegram alert
This ensures the bot reacts the millisecond a transaction is confirmed.
Lessons Learned
Safety First: Never hardcode your API keys. Use environment variables.
Handling Errors: Solana’s network can be volatile. Always use try-except blocks around your WebSocket logic to ensure the bot automatically reconnects if the connection drops.
Keep it Simple: Don’t over-engineer. A simple script running under tmux is often more reliable than a complex system.
Try It Yourself
I’ve open-sourced the code to help others get started with Solana development. You can find the full project on GitHub:
👉 Solana Copy Trade Bot - https://github.com/rdin777/solana-copy-trade-bot-public
What’s Next?
I’m planning to add more features soon, such as:
Supporting multiple chains.
Analyzing transaction types (e.g., separating swaps from simple transfers).
Feedback is welcome! Feel free to open an issue on GitHub or drop a comment here if you have ideas on how to improve the transaction filtering.
Happy coding! 🚀
solana, #python, #web3, #beginners, #tutorial
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