Summary: EVM patterns don’t “just work” on Solana. If you translate Solidity flows 1:1, you’ll hit account contention, mispriced priority fees, and missed SLAs; this guide pinpoints the exact shifts you must make—and how 7Block Labs de-risks the migration with a hard ROI model and SOC2-aligned delivery for Enterprise teams. (solana.com)

Title: Solana Development for EVM Developers: Key Concept Shifts

Target audience: Enterprise product, platform, and procurement teams evaluating Solana for payments, tokenized assets, or real-time markets. Required keywords: SOC2, SLAs, RFP, procurement, ROI.

Pain — the specific, technical headache you’re feeling now

• Your Solidity/EVM mental model breaks on day one:

  • You design pooled state (one contract, many users) and discover Solana’s Sealevel executes in parallel only when account write-sets don’t conflict. A single hot account (e.g., a busy AMM pool) throttles throughput. Reads can parallelize; writes on the same account cannot. (alchemy.com)
  • Transactions fail sporadically during traffic spikes. Default compute budgets and “zero” priority fees are not enough; validators prioritize by compute-unit price, CU limits, signature and write-lock costs. (solana.com)
  • Your “gas optimization” playbook doesn’t map: Solana uses compute units (CUs), versioned transactions, and Address Lookup Tables (ALTs) to pack more accounts, not EVM-like calldata minimization. (docs.solanalabs.com)

• Architecture drift and compliance gaps:

  • Contracts ≠ programs; state lives in accounts, ownership is by program, and authority is delegated via Program Derived Addresses (PDAs). Canonical bump checks are mandatory to avoid spoofed authorities. (solana.com)
  • Oracle flows differ: Pyth moved from “push” to “pull”—you post attested price updates when you need them or subscribe to sponsored updates. Wrong integration equals stale or unverifiable prices. (pyth.network)
  • Token controls aren’t ERC-20 flags; they’re Token Extensions (transfer hooks, confidential transfers, required memos). Combinations have caveats, and some constraints changed in Solana 1.18. (solana.com)

Agitation — the real risk if you don’t fix it

• Missed deadlines and budget overrun:
  • Without fee/inclusion engineering, small bursts of contention cause retries, broken user flows, and higher fees—your procurement team sees SLA violations instead of ROI. SWQoS peering, priority fees, and bundle flow control are non-optional in production. (solana.com)
  • Blockspace is a moving target. Limits rose from ~48M CUs to ~60M in 2025, with proposals for 100M and even removing block-level caps post‑Alpenglow; if you don’t pin client/tooling versions and test budgets, your planned capacity and costs drift. (cointelegraph.com)
• Compliance and security exposure:
  • Incorrect PDA derivations or missing canonical-bump validation enable privilege misuse via CPI chains; shallow audits miss this. (solana.com)
  • Token compliance (memos, default account states, transfer policing) must be enforced with Token Extensions—not ad hoc rules—or you’ll fail SOC2 control evidence and downstream reconciliations. (solana.com)
• Opportunity cost:
  • You could be issuing receipts or entitlements at web scale using state compression (100M mints ≈ ~5–50 SOL historically) but remain on slow, expensive L2 minting because nobody modeled Solana’s Merkle-tree compression and proof paths with your ERP. (github.com)

Solution — 7Block’s methodology to migrate EVM teams to Solana with measurable ROI

Phase 0: Procurement-ready blueprint (2–3 weeks)

• Deliverables:
  • Architecture spec and risk register mapped to SOC2 controls and SLAs; RACI for on-chain key management (upgrade authority, freeze authority), incident runbooks, and validator/RPC vendor selection.
  • Capacity plan: target CU per flow, CU price bands, and write-lock hot-spot analysis.
• Inputs:
  • Your RFP/SOW, data flows, compliance scope (SOC2 Type I/II), and SLA targets (p50/p95 confirmation, success rate).
• Why it matters: Enterprise procurement and InfoSec want provable controls; we align on budgets and “money phrases” early: “compute unit budgets,” “stake‑weighted QoS,” and “Jito bundles” as inclusion controls, not tribal slang. (solana.com)

Phase 1: EVM→SVM architecture translation

• Account-first design instead of contract-first:
  • Partition state with PDAs: seed by user id, market id, or epoch to avoid write conflicts; enforce canonical bump and program-id checks to prevent spoofed PDAs across CPIs. (solana.com)
  • Versioned transactions and ALTs: compile to v0, group large account sets, and raise the effective account cap from ~32 to up to 64 per tx via lookup, with LUTs holding up to 256 entries. (solana.com)
• Token Extensions for policy:
  • Apply transfer hooks for royalties/compliance, required memo for reconciliation, CPI guard, default account state, and confidential transfers for privacy. Note incompatibilities (e.g., non-transferable + hooks; fee + confidential transfer constraints in 1.18). (solana.com)

Phase 2: Inclusion engineering and fee strategy

• Compute Budget tuning:
  • Default is 200k CUs/instruction, 1.4M CUs/transaction. Simulate, then set realistic CU limits and micro‑lamports per CU; pay for what you request, not what you consume. (solana.com)
• Priority fee sourcing:
  • Integrate Helius/Triton/QuickNode fee APIs or Jupiter’s priority estimator and set CU price/limit per route. Phantom’s wallet auto-adds priority fees; your backend should not assume zero. (solana.com)
• Packet routing and MEV-aware flow control:
  • Use Stake‑weighted QoS peering to land txs during contention; use Jito bundles for atomic multi‑leg flows (liquidations, cross‑venue moves), including tips when needed. (solana.com)
• Transport:
  • Plan for QUIC and stake‑weighted QoS defaults on modern Agave clients; align RPC providers and peering upfront. (solana.com)

Phase 3: Oracles, compression, and data plumbing

• Pyth pull integration (Enterprise-ready):
  • Post verified PriceUpdateV2 accounts in the same atomic flow as your instruction; fall back to sponsored push feeds on shard 0 where available; monitor heartbeat/deviation changes. (docs.pyth.network)
• State compression:
  • For receipts, badges, or entitlements, back Merkle roots on-chain, keep leaves off-chain with auditability; Bubblegum/Account Compression + indexer Read APIs keep UX snappy at scale. (solana.com)
• Data pipelines:
  • Stream on-chain events via Geyser plugins to your warehouse for SOC2 evidence and reconciliation (hash‑linked proofs, memo‑based references). Link: blockchain integration

Phase 4: Tooling, versions, and SLAs

• Client/runtime pinning:
  • Agave is the maintained validator client; plan upgrades on the v2.x track and validate against proposed capacity shifts (e.g., 60M→100M CUs; MCP/Alpenglow roadmap). Anchor ≥0.31.x pairs with Solana 2.x; 0.32.0 recommends 2.3.0. (github.com)
• CI/CD and verification:
  • Use Anchor’s latest IDL and solana-verify for reproducible builds; lock rustc and crate versions; enforce program upgrade governance. (anchor-lang.com)
• Security gates:
  • Canonical bump enforcement, strict program_id checks on CPIs, signer scoping, and Token Extension policy tests. Link: security audit services
• Procurement artifacts:
  • SOC2 control mapping, DPA addendum, incident SLAs, and verifiable deployment logs for audits.

Practical examples you can adapt this quarter

1. Replace “gas optimization” with CU & inclusion optimization

• What you do on Solana:
  • Simulate to estimate CUs and set a compute budget; set a competitive CU price from a fee oracle; favor ALTs to reduce tx size.
• Minimal TypeScript (server-side signer):

import { ComputeBudgetProgram, Transaction } from '@solana/web3.js';

// 1) Right-size compute limit based on simulation + 10% headroom
const limitIx = ComputeBudgetProgram.setComputeUnitLimit({ units: 300_000 });

// 2) Price your inclusion (micro-lamports per CU) using provider’s recommendation
const priceIx = ComputeBudgetProgram.setComputeUnitPrice({ microLamports: 2 }); // example

const tx = new Transaction().add(limitIx, priceIx, /* your program ix's */);

This aligns with Solana’s prioritization formula where validators consider CU price, requested limit, and lock costs. It prevents overpaying for unused CUs and underbidding during bursts. (solana.com)

1. Tokenized payouts with audit-grade controls

• Create a mint with Token Extensions:
  • Required transfer memo for reconciliation, CPI guard to prevent undesired programmatic movements, default-frozen accounts until KYC is complete, or transfer hooks for programmable compliance logic.
• CLI sketch:

# Example: metadata + required memos + default state
spl-token --program-id TokenzQdBNbLqP5VEhdkAS6EPFLC1PHnBqCXEpPxuEb \
  create-token --enable-metadata --enable-required-transfer-memos \
  --default-account-state frozen

• Confidential transfers (1.18+): Use the Token Extension program; note incompatibilities with some fees/hooks when designing policy. (solana.com)
• Tie memos to invoice IDs and persist a Geyser stream for SOC2 evidence. Link: asset tokenization

1. High‑volume entitlements via state compression

• Pattern: issue compressed NFTs as receipts/badges; mint on-chain roots, proofs from indexers; cost scales sub‑linearly (orders of magnitude cheaper than uncompressed). (solana.com)
• Add fee abstraction so end users never touch SOL; batch ownership updates. (solana.com)
• Map proof verification to your ERP keys and memo fields for reconciliation.

1. Pyth for deterministic, on‑demand prices

• Use PriceUpdateV2 account in your instruction; post latest update from Hermes in the same flow; validate feed id and max staleness. Example (Rust/Anchor concept):

use pyth_solana_receiver_sdk::price_update::PriceUpdateV2;
// ctx.accounts.price_update: Account<'info, PriceUpdateV2>
// Ensure get_price_no_older_than(...) with your SLA window (e.g., 30s)

Sponsored feeds change parameters over time—monitor heartbeat/deviation and shard appropriately. (docs.pyth.network)

1. Avoid account hotspots with PDAs and sharding

• Map each user/market to its own PDA; never funnel everything into one “vault” account. Enforce canonical bumps and strict program_id checks to prevent adversarial CPI account substitution. (solana.com)

Best emerging practices we’re applying in 2026 builds

• Local fee market reality check:
  • Fees are “local” to state you touch, but discovery is still imperfect under multi-threaded scheduling; use empirical estimators (Helius/Jupiter) and SWQoS/Jito routing to hit inclusion SLOs. (solanacompass.com)
• Runtime and network evolution:
  • Plan for Agave 2.x, scheduler bindings (custom block packing), and the MCP/Alpenglow path; don’t overfit to today’s CU caps (60M) when roadmaps show 100M+ and/or eventual cap removal. Pin versions, test forward. (anza.xyz)
• Wallet UX and budgeting:
  • Phantom auto-applies priority fees; align server-side estimators to prevent user-visible “retry storms.” (docs.phantom.com)
• Developer stack:
  • Use Anchor ≥0.31.x (IDL/verify improvements) with Solana 2.x; compile to v0 txs with ALTs; enforce reproducible builds via solana-verify. (anchor-lang.com)

What this means in business terms (Enterprise keywords and ROI)

• Faster SLAs out of the box:
  • Median confirmation targets near 400ms block cadence with sub‑cent base fees; inclusion stability comes from pricing and routing, not luck. Our pilots set explicit p50/p95 SLOs per flow and budget priority fee bands per provider. (solana.com)
• Predictable procurement:
  • Token Extension policy maps to audit trails (required memos), while confidential transfers address privacy-by-design. Our delivery includes SOC2 control mapping (CC6/CC7 change management evidence) and vendor onboarding docs.
• Concrete cost controls:
  • We model base fees (5,000 lamports/signature), rent for account creation, and priority fee ladders; compression cuts issuance costs by orders of magnitude. This becomes a unit‑economics dashboard your CFO can underwrite. (solana.com)

How we engage (and where to start)

• Architecture & discovery (2–3 weeks): translate your EVM design to SVM, produce the SOC2‑aligned blueprint and CU/inclusion budgets. Link: blockchain development services
• Build & integrate (6–10 weeks): implement programs with Anchor, Token Extensions, Pyth pull, compression, ALTs; wire SWQoS/Jito routing and CI. Link: custom blockchain development services · Link: smart contract development · Link: cross‑chain solutions
• Security & compliance: formal reviews for PDAs/CPI surfaces; Token Extension policy tests; verifiable builds; audit pack. Link: security audit services
• Data & operations: event streaming, reconciliation, chargeback memos, dashboards; operator playbooks with SLAs. Link: blockchain integration
• GTM support: token economics, fundraising collateral, exchange readiness. Link: fundraising

Proof — what we measure in a 90‑day pilot

• Delivery SLOs
  • Time‑to‑first‑mainnet transaction: ≤ 30 days with v0 + ALTs and locked CU budgets.
  • Inclusion SLO: ≥ 99.5% success under defined CU price bands on SWQoS‑peered RPC; atomic routes via Jito bundles for complex flows. (solana.com)
• Performance & reliability
  • p50 confirmation ≈ 400–600ms for standard transfers; p95 < 1.5s with correct fee bands; base fees ≈ $0.001 per tx; account-creation costs budgeted once per user. (solana.com)
• Cost & scale
  • Compression: issue 1M digital receipts at single‑digit SOL instead of thousands; measurable storage and issuance savings vs. uncompressed. (solana.com)
• Compliance
  • SOC2 evidence pack: change logs, deployment hashes (solana-verify), token memo reconciliation, access reviews.

Appendix: quick EVM→SVM concept map you can hand to your team

• Contracts → Programs; Storage → Accounts (10MiB/account; realloc up to 10,240 bytes per op). Use PDAs for deterministic program‑owned addresses. (docs.rs)
• Gas price → CU price (micro‑lamports/CU) + CU limit; Base fee per signature + optional priority fee determine inclusion. (solana.com)
• Nonce / mempool → Durable nonces + Jito relay/bundles (private ordering) when necessary. (jito-foundation.gitbook.io)
• Global fee market → Localized contention; engineer around hot accounts via sharding/queues and pay priority only where needed. (solana.com)
• Chainlink pulls → Pyth pull: post price attestations in‑flow; sponsored push where appropriate; validate age and feed id. (docs.pyth.network)
• ERC‑20 toggles → Token Extensions matrix; plan compatibility early. (solana.com)

Where 7Block fits today

• We bridge Solidity and ZK‑adjacent requirements (confidential transfers; proof‑based pricing) with business outcomes: predictable SLAs, SOC2-ready evidence, and a unit‑economics model your CFO accepts.
• Start with a pilot integrating:
  • Program accounts with PDAs and Anchor ≥0.31.x,
  • Versioned txs + ALTs,
  • Priority fee oracles + SWQoS,
  • Pyth pull + compression,
  • Token Extensions for policy,
  • Reproducible builds & audits.

Related services and solutions from 7Block Labs

• Development: web3 development services · blockchain development services
• Security & audits: security audit services
• Integrations & data: blockchain integration · asset management platform development
• DeFi & tokens: DeFi development services · token development services · DEX development services · dApp development
• Cross‑chain & bridges: blockchain bridge development · cross‑chain solutions development
• Tokenization & NFTs: asset tokenization · NFT development services · NFT marketplace development

CTA: Book a 90-Day Pilot Strategy Call