Porting EVM Contracts to Solana — Forge College

Description

Porting EVM contracts to Solana requires more than syntax changes — it demands rethinking invariants, account architecture, and transaction boundaries. Which contract behaviors must remain identical, and where should you redesign for Solana's account model and runtime constraints? What you'll learn This lesson shows how to identify the contract invariants you must preserve (balance conservation, access checks, nonce or finality guarantees) and why those invariants drive test and design choices. You will learn how to choose between a compatibility-preserving port and a redesign that leverages Solana's composability and performance tradeoffs. The lesson explains how to transform Solidity function boundaries into Solana instructions and transactions, including when to merge or split callers to preserve atomicity and respect account-borrowing rules. You will get practical guidance for designing account data layouts and serialization strategies that minimize deserialization work and cross-program overhead, and concrete patterns for mapping Solidity-style authority and approvals to owner keys, program-derived addresses, and explicit signer requirements. Who this is for This is for intermediate smart contract developers who know Solidity/EVM and have a basic understanding of Solana's account model and transaction semantics. Prior experience writing deterministic unit tests and integration tests, and aligning toolchains, will help you apply the design checklist immediately. Key topics covered - Inventorying invariants to preserve: state transitions, access checks, balance and nonce guarantees - Compatibility vs redesign tradeoffs: transaction size, composability, runtime cost considerations - Instruction and transaction boundaries: merging/splitting callers and atomicity under account-borrowing rules - Account data layout and serialization strategies to reduce deserialization and cross-program overhead - Authority mapping: owner keys, program-derived addresses (PDAs), and explicit signer patterns - Testing and validation checklist: deterministic unit tests, end-to-end production-flow integration tests Ready to design safer, high-performance Solana ports? Start now: https://www.forge.college/