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Inside the Solana Docs – Creating Wallets, Airdrops and SOL Transfers
In this part of the Solana Documentation, we explore how to interact with a Solana Cluster via the command line. For this you will need to install the Solana Command Line Tools on Linux, MacOS or Windows.
In this tutorial we will connect to a cluster, create a wallet and explore some of the Solana command line options SOL Wallet creation, airdropping SOL, transferring SOL, checking your wallet balance and confirming transactions.
Missed something? Check out the rest of the Inside the Solana Docs blog post series:
Installing Solana Command Line Tools
You need Linux, MacOS or Windows to setup the CLI tools.
curl -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solana-labs/solana/v1.1.10/install/solana-install-init.sh | sh -s - v1.1.10

Linux (195 mb)

MacOS (62 mb)

Windows (32 mb)
You can also download the binaries manually if the above script doesn’t work.
Halfway through writing this article, Solana updated from v1.1.9, to v1.1.10, to v1.1.12 ! Stay tuned for the latest updates at Solana Releases. They also adding instructions for installing Solana on Windows to their Docs. It goes to show you how FAST the Solana Development teams are pushing out code.

Solana Releases actually added assets for Windows back on 24th March 2020Windows command-line binaries are now available: solana, solana-keygen, solana-install
MAC TIP: Your computer may complain that “Solana” is not trusted. To manually trust it, just open “Preferences > Security & Privacy” to “Allow” Solana. From there within Terminal you can see all the Solana command line tools!
My-air:Solana$ solana solana-cli 1.1.10 Blockchain, Rebuilt for Scale USAGE: solana [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] <SUBCOMMAND> FLAGS: -h, --help Prints help information --skip-seed-phrase-validation Skip validation of seed phrases. Use this if your phrase does not use the BIP39 official English word list -V, --version Prints version information -v, --verbose Show additional information OPTIONS: -C, --config <FILEPATH> Configuration file to use [default: /Users/solana/.config/solana/cli/config.yml] -u, --url <URL> JSON RPC URL for the solana cluster -k, --keypair <KEYPAIR> Filepath or URL to a keypair --output <output_format> Return information in specified output format. Supports: json, json-compact [possible values: json, json-compact] --ws <URL> WebSocket URL for the solana cluster SUBCOMMANDS: account Show the contents of an account address Get your public key airdrop Request lamports authorize-nonce-account Assign account authority to a new entity balance Get your balance block-production Show information about block production block-time Get estimated production time of a block cancel Cancel a transfer catchup Wait for a validator to catch up to the cluster claim-storage-reward Redeem storage reward credits cluster-date Get current cluster date, computed from genesis creation time and network time cluster-version Get the version of the cluster entrypoint config Solana command-line tool configuration settings confirm Confirm transaction by signature create-address-with-seed Generate a derived account address with a seed create-archiver-storage-account Create an archiver storage account create-nonce-account Create a nonce account create-stake-account Create a stake account create-validator-storage-account Create a validator storage account create-vote-account Create a vote account deactivate-stake Deactivate the delegated stake from the stake account decode-transaction Decode a base-85 binary transaction delegate-stake Delegate stake to a vote account deploy Deploy a program epoch Get current epoch epoch-info Get information about the current epoch fees Display current cluster fees genesis-hash Get the genesis hash gossip Show the current gossip network nodes help Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s) leader-schedule Display leader schedule live-slots Show information about the current slot progression new-nonce Generate a new nonce, rendering the existing nonce useless nonce Get the current nonce value nonce-account Show the contents of a nonce account pay Send a payment ping Submit transactions sequentially resolve-signer Checks that a signer is valid, and returns its specific path; useful for signers that may be specified generally, eg. usb://ledger send-signature Send a signature to authorize a transfer send-timestamp Send a timestamp to unlock a transfer slot Get current slot split-stake Duplicate a stake account, splitting the tokens between the two stake-account Show the contents of a stake account stake-authorize Authorize a new signing keypair for the given stake account stake-history Show the stake history stake-set-lockup Set Lockup for the stake account stakes Show stake account information storage-account Show the contents of a storage account total-supply Get total number of SOL transaction-count Get current transaction count transaction-history Show historical transactions affecting the given address, ordered based on the slot in which they were confirmed in from lowest to highest slot transfer Transfer funds between system accounts validator-info Publish/get Validator info on Solana validators Show summary information about the current validators vote-account Show the contents of a vote account vote-authorize-voter Authorize a new vote signing keypair for the given vote account vote-authorize-withdrawer Authorize a new withdraw signing keypair for the given vote account vote-update-validator Update the vote account's validator identity withdraw-from-nonce-account Withdraw SOL from the nonce account withdraw-from-vote-account Withdraw lamports from a vote account into a specified account withdraw-stake Withdraw the unstaked SOL from the stake account
Let’s target the Solana DevNet Cluster:
C:\Users\SOLdier>solana config set --url https://devnet.solana.com Config File: C:\Users\SOLdier\.config\solana\cli\config.yml RPC URL: https://devnet.solana.com WebSocket URL: wss://devnet.solana.com/ (computed) Keypair Path: C:\Users\SOLdier\.config\solana\id.json C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana config get Config File: C:\Users\SOLdier\.config\solana\cli\config.yml RPC URL: https://devnet.solana.com WebSocket URL: wss://devnet.solana.com/ (computed) Keypair Path: C:\Users\SOLdier\.config\solana\id.json
Now we need to make sure the local Solana install matches the Solana network cluster version:
C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana --version solana-cli 1.1.12 C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana cluster-version 1.1.12 b9a80152
Link a Solana Wallet to Run CLI Commands
In order to send or receive tokens and stake in a cluster, you will need to link a wallet. If you would like more information on the different types of wallets, check out our Solana Wallet Guide. For this example, we will be creating one of the most insecure wallets, the File System Wallet.
To create a File System Wallet we will need to run the solana-keygen command.
my-air:Solana$ solana-keygen Killed: 9

If you running this in MacOS, you will need to allow the command via System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Allow:

You can now test out you can run the command by executing “solana-keygen –help”
my-air:Solana$ solana-keygen --help solana-keygen 1.1.10 Solana key generation utility USAGE: solana-keygen [OPTIONS] <SUBCOMMAND> FLAGS: -h, --help Prints help information -V, --version Prints version information OPTIONS: -C, --config <FILEPATH> Configuration file to use [default: /Users/johnny/.config/solana/cli/config.yml] SUBCOMMANDS: grind Grind for vanity keypairs help Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s) new Generate new keypair file from a passphrase and random seed phrase pubkey Display the pubkey from a keypair file recover Recover keypair from seed phrase and passphrase verify Verify a keypair can sign and verify a message.
Let’s build File System Wallet and generate a key pair (Solana Docs):
mkdir ~/my-solana-wallet solana-keygen new --outfile ~/my-solana-wallet-devnet/my-keypair.json Generating a new keypair For added security, enter a passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Wrote new keypair to ~/my-solana-wallet-devnet/my-keypair.json ============================================================================= pubkey: 3Fj7USbqwiqVMGgL9v46kgV3eQsKYHtKPtHtJPHF6fxK ============================================================================= Save this seed phrase to recover your new keypair: this will be twelve random random words like weather and blast =============================================================================
You can then verify your Public Wallet Address against your Keypair file:
solana-keygen verify 3Fj7USbqwiqVMGgL9v46kgV3eQsKYHtKPtHtJPHF6fxK ~/my-solana-wallet-devnet/my-keypair.json Verification for public key: 3Fj7USbqwiqVMGgL9v46kgV3eQsKYHtKPtHtJPHF6fxK: Success
Let’s AirDrop 1000 SOL on DevNet (TestNet)
Now you can do some cool stuff and see how quick Solana is. We will run a command to check our new account has zero balance. As we are on the test network, we can airdrop ourselves some SOL! The commands we will use are as follows:
solana balance <ACCOUNT_ADDRESS> –url https://devnet.solana.com
solana airdrop 1000 <RECIPIENT_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS> –url https://devnet.solana.com
C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana balance 3Fj7USbqwiqVMGgL9v46kgV3eQsKYHtKPtHtJPHF6fxK --url https://devnet.solana.com 0 SOL C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana airdrop 1000 3Fj7USbqwiqVMGgL9v46kgV3eQsKYHtKPtHtJPHF6fxK --url https://devnet.solana.com Requesting airdrop of 1000 SOL from 34.82.57.86:9900 1000 SOL C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana balance 3Fj7USbqwiqVMGgL9v46kgV3eQsKYHtKPtHtJPHF6fxK --url https://devnet.solana.com 1000 SOL
Now I’m going to make another wallet so I can do a SOL transfer:
C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana-keygen new --outfile ~/my-solana-wallet-devnet2/my-keypair.json Generating a new keypair For added security, enter a passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Wrote new keypair to ~/my-solana-wallet-devnet2/my-keypair.json ================================================================================ pubkey: 45Mfukyu1XFc56Fk5yUDcbkrZY49prsgVR4eCJpd3DtW ================================================================================
Then we will transfer some sweet SOL from the first account to the second account. The first account (3Fj7USbqwiqVMGgL9v46kgV3eQsKYHtKPtHtJPHF6fxK) has a balance of 1000 SOL that we airdropped before. The second account (45Mfukyu1XFc56Fk5yUDcbkrZY49prsgVR4eCJpd3DtW) has a balance of 0 SOL.
The commands wee will use are the following, where KEYPAIR is the file path for your first wallet, RECIPIENT is the public key of your second wallet and AMOUNT is how many SOL:
solana transfer –from –url https://devnet.solana.com –fee-payer
solana balance <ACCOUNT_ADDRESS> –url https://devnet.solana.com
C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana transfer --from ~/my-solana-wallet-devnet/my-keypair.json 45Mfukyu1XFc56Fk5yUDcbkrZY49prsgVR4eCJpd3DtW 10 --url https://devnet.solana.com --fee-payer ~/my-solana-wallet-devnet/my-keypair.json Signature: 3gAhpt1qk9bXE7t1vusf4cX13LEiGcwrM6amgoWtMATPf95NwGXm3kYrmj4EFPQUtQL1AvePfXfN5GHdZSSspLW C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana balance 3Fj7USbqwiqVMGgL9v46kgV3eQsKYHtKPtHtJPHF6fxK --url https://devnet.solana.com 989.999995 SOL C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana balance 45Mfukyu1XFc56Fk5yUDcbkrZY49prsgVR4eCJpd3DtW --url https://devnet.solana.com 10 SOL
Above we have confirmed that the SOL transferred from one wallet to another. However, you may have noticed the blockchain confirmations counting up to 32 confirmations after you ran the command. We can also confirm the transactions was verified by the blockchain:
C:\Users\SOLdier\Solana>solana confirm 3gAhpt1qk9bXE7t1vusf4cX13LEiGcwrM6amgoWtMATPf95NwGXm3kYrmj4EFPQUtQL1AvePfXfN5GHdZSSspLW Confirmed
There you have it! Today we successfully installed Solana Command Line Tools across Linux, MacOS and Windows! We also chose the DevNet Solana Network, created a Wallet, Airdropped some SOL, then transferred it to another Wallet !
You are Now a Solana Command Line Guru!
In the next topic, we will get into how to Stake your SOL to a Validator node and get some SOL rewards.
Stay Tuned and please share us on Twitter!
Did you know you can install Solana CLI on Windows as of March 24th? #development#speed#Solana@solana#TPS#blockchain#developers #dev $SOL solana.blog/inside-the-sol…
— ☀️ Buildooors ☀️ (@buildooors_com)
6:25 AM • May 16, 2020