May 13
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Why plan a migration before you write code? Porting smart contracts from an EVM model to Solana's account-and-instruction model is a design exercise as much as a rewrite. A clear strategy and checkpoints reduce safety risks, preserve invariants, and let you validate behavior incrementally. What you'll learn This lesson shows how to convert your EVM design artifacts into a reproducible, testable port plan. You'll learn how to derive measurable success criteria (behavioral parity, safety invariants, test coverage targets), and how to map EVM responsibilities—storage slots, msg.sender authority, and reentrancy protections—onto Solana primitives such as accounts, owner checks, signer lists, and program-derived addresses (PDAs). We cover how to choose migration trade-offs (refactor versus emulate), how to pick the smallest safe unit of migration (single instruction or instruction family), and how to define compatibility checkpoints for state layout, instruction semantics, and cross-program invocations. The lesson also walks through a minimal Anchor-style transfer handler example to illustrate which checks move from runtime to account metadata or compile-time guarantees. Who this is for Intermediate developers familiar with Solidity/EVM concepts who are beginning to implement Solana programs. Prior exposure to Rust and basic Solana primitives is recommended but not strictly required. Key topics covered - Defining goals and measurable success criteria for a port (parity, invariants, tests) - Mapping EVM concepts (storage, msg.sender, reentrancy) to Solana accounts, signers, PDAs - Migration trade-offs: refactor logic vs emulate behaviour for compatibility - Checkpoints for incremental validation: state migration, instruction semantics, CPIs - Prioritized testing plan: unit tests, integration tests, and simulation tests - Anchor-style transfer example: shifting checks to account constraints and owner/signature validation Plan your port to be safe, testable, and incremental. Learn to turn your EVM design sketches into a Solana implementation with clear checkpoints and test priorities. Start building with intention: https://www.forge.college/