How do token ownership, metadata, and upgrade patterns change when you move from EVM token contracts to Solana's program-based architecture? Understanding these differences up front lets you design minting and transfer behavior that fits Solana's primitives instead of copying EVM assumptions.
What you'll learn: This lesson synthesizes the functional differences between ERC-20 / ERC-721 contracts and Solana's SPL + Metaplex model, with concrete examples of where state and logic live. You'll see how Metaplex separates NFT identity into a metadata PDA while ownership and balances live in mints and Associated Token Accounts (ATAs). We explain deployment and upgrade implications of shared program binaries versus per-contract storage, and compare transfer/approval semantics and collection modeling across ecosystems. Finally, you'll get a decision workflow and three concrete design choices to make now for mint authority, metadata ownership, and ATA management for both fungible and non-fungible tokens.
Who this is for: Intermediate blockchain developers familiar with ERC standards who are porting token logic to Solana. Expect basic knowledge of token concepts and developer tooling.
Key topics covered:
- Differences in state vs logic: contracts-as-objects vs programs-as-services
- SPL token mints, Associated Token Accounts, and ownership semantics
- Metaplex metadata PDA and how metadata is decoupled from token accounts
- Deployment, upgradeability, and authority models on Solana
- Mapping ERC-20/ERC-721 semantics to Solana primitives and transfer implications
- Decision workflow for mint authority, metadata ownership, and ATA patterns