Intermediate· Lesson 2 of 8· 3 min

SPL tokens: mints, token accounts and ATAs

A token on Solana is two kinds of account and one program. Once you see the shapes, creating, sending and auditing tokens becomes mechanical.

Solana has no token contract per project. One program, the Token program, TokenkegQfeZyiNwAJbNbGKPFXCWuBvf9Ss623VQ5DA, and its successor Token-2022, TokenzQdBNbLqP5VEhdkAS6EPFLC1PHnBqCXEpPxuEb, manages every token. A “token” is a set of accounts owned by that program.

The mint

The mint account defines the token: supply, decimals and two optional authorities. Its address is the token's identity: what you paste into an explorer, and what people mean by “contract address” on Solana.

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1. The mint address: the token's only real identity.
2. Owner program: the Token program, the only program that can change this account.
3. Decimals: 6, so 1,000,000 base units display as 1 USDC.
4. The mint authority. For USDC it is the issuer's multisig, which can issue new supply. On a fair-launch token you want to see it revoked.
5. Holders: one token account each. Nearly nine million accounts, all owned by the Token program.

Those two authorities are the first thing a buyer checks. A live mint authority means supply can be inflated; a live freeze authority means holders can be locked. Revoking both is one transaction in Token Manager; Token authorities explains what each one can do.

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1. Current supply in whole tokens: the mint's supply divided by 10^decimals.
2. Mint authority: still set, so more USDC can be issued.
3. Freeze authority: still set, so individual token accounts can be frozen. Expected of a regulated stablecoin; a red flag on a memecoin.
4. Decimals, fixed when the mint was created.

Token accounts

Balances live neither in the mint nor in your wallet. Each holder has a token account per mint: a 165-byte account owned by the Token program that records the mint, the owner (the wallet allowed to spend) and the amount. Holding five different tokens means five token accounts, each with its own ~0.0015 SOL rent deposit.

Associated token accounts

A wallet could have several token accounts for one mint, which would be a mess. The Associated Token Account program fixes it by deriving one canonical address per (wallet, mint) pair, a program derived address from the seeds [wallet, token_program, mint]. Anyone can compute it, so a sender can create the recipient's ATA in the same transaction as the transfer. That is why sending someone a token they have never held costs a little more: you pay the rent on their new token account. Airdrop costs explained has the arithmetic.

Metadata

The Token program knows nothing about a token's name or logo. Those come from a metadata account: for classic SPL tokens a Metaplex Token Metadata account derived from the mint, for Token-2022 optionally stored in the mint itself through the metadata extension. Wallets and explorers read it, and nothing on-chain enforces uniqueness. A lookalike can copy any name, which is why the mint address is the only identity that counts.

Token-2022

Token-2022 is the same model with optional extensions on the mint or the token account: transfer fees, non-transferable tokens, interest-bearing display, confidential transfers, a permanent delegate, metadata in the mint. Wallet and exchange support is broad but not universal, so choose it when you need an extension. See SPL vs Token-2022 and Token-2022 extensions.

Creating one, in one transaction

1. Create the mint account (paying its rent) and initialize it with decimals and authorities.
2. Create the metadata account that points at the mint.
3. Create your own associated token account for the mint.
4. Mint the initial supply into it.
5. Optionally revoke the mint and freeze authorities.

SPL Token Creator does all five in one signed transaction, on devnet or mainnet.

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