solana-rpc

Solana RPC — Direct Blockchain Interaction

The Solana JSON-RPC API provides direct read/write access to the blockchain. Use it for account state queries, token balance lookups, transaction building and submission, and program account enumeration. This is the low-level foundation when higher-level APIs (Birdeye, Helius, SolanaTracker) don't have the data you need.

Quick Start

import httpx

RPC = os.getenv("SOLANA_RPC_URL", "https://api.mainnet-beta.solana.com")

def rpc_call(method: str, params: list = None) -> dict:
    resp = httpx.post(RPC, json={
        "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 1,
        "method": method, "params": params or [],
    }, timeout=30.0)
    return resp.json()

# Get SOL balance
result = rpc_call("getBalance", ["WALLET_PUBKEY"])
sol_balance = result["result"]["value"] / 1e9

# Get latest blockhash
result = rpc_call("getLatestBlockhash")
blockhash = result["result"]["value"]["blockhash"]

RPC Providers

Provider	Free Tier	Paid	Notes
Helius	50K credits/day	$49+/mo	Enhanced RPCs, DAS API
QuickNode	Limited	$49+/mo	Multi-chain, WebSocket
Triton	No free tier	~$300+/mo	Yellowstone gRPC bundled
Shyft	Limited	$49+/mo	Yellowstone gRPC bundled
Alchemy	300M CU/mo	Scaling	Good free tier
Public (mainnet-beta)	Free	—	Rate limited, unreliable

Recommendation: Use Helius or QuickNode for development. Never use public RPC for production trading.

Core Read Methods

Account & Balance

# SOL balance (in lamports, divide by 1e9 for SOL)
getBalance(pubkey, {commitment: "confirmed"})

# Full account info (data, owner, lamports, executable)
getAccountInfo(pubkey, {encoding: "jsonParsed"})

# Multiple accounts in one call
getMultipleAccounts([pubkey1, pubkey2], {encoding: "jsonParsed"})

Token Accounts

# All SPL token accounts owned by a wallet
getTokenAccountsByOwner(wallet_pubkey, {
    "programId": "TokenkegQfeZyiNwAJbNbGKPFXCWuBvf9Ss623VQ5DA"
}, {"encoding": "jsonParsed"})

# Token balance for a specific token account
getTokenAccountBalance(token_account_pubkey)

# Largest token accounts (top holders)
getTokenLargestAccounts(mint_pubkey)

# Total supply of a token
getTokenSupply(mint_pubkey)