Solana words explained: rent, lamports, token accounts and more
The words Solana wallets use, each in a sentence or two, with the numbers as they are in October 2026 and links to the longer answers.
Wallets and keys
Wallet
A key pair: a public address that anyone can send to, and a private key that signs. On chain, a wallet is a system account that holds SOL.
Address
The public half of a key pair, 32 to 44 letters and numbers, for example the one you paste to receive SOL. Safe to share.
Private key
The secret half of a key pair. Whoever has it controls the wallet. Usually shown as about 88 characters. See seed phrase vs private key.
Recovery phrase (seed phrase)
Twelve or 24 words from which a wallet app makes as many key pairs as you need. The master backup for every wallet made from it.
Derivation path
The numbers that pick one wallet out of a recovery phrase, such as m/44'/501'/0'/0' for Phantom’s first account. Different apps use different paths. See Solana derivation paths.
Accounts and rent
Account
Everything on Solana lives in accounts: wallets, coins you hold, programs and their data. Each account has an address, an owner program, some data and a SOL balance.
Lamport
The smallest unit of SOL. 1 SOL is 1,000,000,000 lamports.
Rent
The SOL an account must hold to exist: (128 + its data size in bytes) × 5,080 lamports today. A deposit, not a fee, returned in full when the account closes. See Solana rent explained.
Rent exempt
An account holding at least its minimum. Every account must be rent exempt; nothing is taken from it over time.
Token account
The account that holds one coin for one wallet. Each coin you hold has its own, holding 0.00149 SOL of rent (0.00204 SOL for older ones).
Associated token account
The standard token account for a wallet and a coin, at an address anyone can work out from the two. Apps send coins there by default.
Closing an account
Ending an empty account and sending its rent to a wallet you choose. See how to get SOL back from empty token accounts.
Transactions and fees
Transaction
A signed bundle of instructions that runs all at once or not at all. At most 1,232 bytes.
Signature
Proof that a key pair approved a transaction. Also the transaction’s ID: the string you look up on an explorer.
Base fee
5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature on every transaction.
Priority fee
An optional extra, priced per compute unit, that helps a transaction land faster when the network is busy. See Solana fees explained.
Compute units
A measure of how much work a transaction asks validators to do.
Fee payer
The wallet that pays a transaction’s fees. Usually the sender, but any signing wallet can pay for the others.
Blockhash
A recent block’s ID that every transaction includes. A transaction whose blockhash is more than about a minute old is refused.
Slippage
How far a swap’s price may move between the quote and the moment it lands before the swap is cancelled.
Coins
Mint
The account that defines a coin: its supply, its decimals and who may create more. A coin’s address is its mint address.
SPL Token and Token-2022
The two token programs on Solana. Token-2022 adds extensions such as transfer fees, transfer hooks and confidential transfers.
Wrapped SOL
SOL held in a token account so programs can treat it like any other coin. Closing the account turns it back into SOL.
Burn
Destroying coins you hold. Burning everything in a token account lets you close it and take back its rent.
Dust
Small leftover balances of coins, often worth less than the fee to sell them.
Staking
Validator
A computer that runs Solana and earns rewards for it. You can delegate SOL to one.
Epoch
Solana’s reward period, 432,000 slots, about two days.
Stake account
An account you own that holds SOL delegated to a validator. At least 1 SOL as of October 2026.
Liquid staking token
A token such as jupSOL that stands for staked SOL and grows in value with the rewards, while you can still sell it. See jupSOL or your own stake account.
Sources
Raven turns all of this into one list of wallets and a review before every move.
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