Solana Opcode Guide

Courtesy of Distributed Atomic State Machine Algorithms Corporation (DASMAC)

📚 Background

Solana programs are typically written in Rust, then compiled via LLVM into an Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) file that can be deployed to a cluster like mainnet. In practice, most developers do not concern themselves with the compilation process or the contents of the executable, even though the resultant bytecode is what actually runs their program logic.

This is because Solana programs, in particular native Rust implementations, are already considered "low-level" due to the manual memory management operations they perform (which may include byte- or even bit-specific logic). Moreover, native Rust programs tend to incorporate various other paradigms typically not encountered outside of embedded systems or other hardware-adjacent engineering contexts. Hence the proliferation of development frameworks like Anchor, which simplify some of the development process at the cost of execution overhead.

Nevertheless, Solana at its core is a virtual machine that simply runs opcodes to manipulate bytes, and a full mastery of the system's execution mechanics requires sufficient grasp of the underlying instruction set architecture. Specifically, this includes a rudimentary understanding of the SBPF opcodes, which are based on eBPF and include syscall support for utilities like logging.

In particular for high-performance applications, opcode-aware programming methods are an effective tool for optimizing transaction costs and for designing robust program architectures, and it is the goal of this guide that through an in-depth exploration of Solana opcodes, developers may improve their command of the enduring Solana Virtual Machine.

💡 Example

A Rust operation that checks if a is less than b looks like:

if a < b

In bytecode this corresponds to the assembler mnemonic:

jlt dst, src, off

Term	Meaning
jlt	The "jump if less than" operation
dst	The destination register (a in Rust)
src	The source register (b in Rust)
off	How much to increment the program counter by (the "offset") if dst is less than src

Inside an ELF file, this jlt operation is represented using the number 173 (or 0xad in hexadecimal), and is encoded in a single byte, corresponding to the constant JLT_REG from the SBPF opcodes.

🚀 Continue your journey

Start by heading over to the quickstart, which will help you set up your environment and run a simple example. After that, simply follow the examples in order to gradually build your familiarity with SBPF program development and analysis.

TIP

Along the way see also the resources page for a curated list of resources to explore on your journey.