Rust has The Book. This is the Solana one — every official example, real source and real tests, in the order the concepts build.
EPUB + PDF, no DRM · free lifetime updates
01 — The Method
Every chapter quotes the official program and its actual test suite from a pinned commit — nothing paraphrased, nothing invented. The early volumes walk every file line by line; the later ones quote the passages that carry the idea, because by then you can read the rest. Either way the code is on the page, so it reads on an e-reader, on paper, on a plane. No laptop required.
Concept first, then the source walked through piece by piece — with diagrams where the idea has shape.
Not a transcription. Every program is read the way you would read a colleague's pull request: what it does, why it does it that way, and what to watch for when you write your own.
The whole series is written against one pinned commit of the repository. Every chapter links the exact source, so what you read is what you run.
02 — The Books
Volume 01 Start here
The mental model everything else builds on
Anchor primer · 15 programs · native/Pinocchio appendix · glossary
After this volume: You can read any Anchor program and know exactly what it does.
Buy Basics alone · $9
Volume 02
From your first mint to a working AMM
SPL token primer · 10 programs · glossary
After this volume: Mints, NFTs, escrows, and AMMs hold no mysteries.
Included in the complete series
Volume 03
Token-2022, the complete tour
Token-2022 primer · 21 programs · glossary
After this volume: You can audit what any Token-2022 mint can and cannot do.
Included in the complete series
Volume 04
Where the examples get serious
6 programs · compression, oracles, tools, games · glossary
After this volume: Nothing in the ecosystem reads like magic anymore.
Included in the complete series
03 — Pricing
$29 all four volumes
Just starting? Basics stands on its own — it assumes nothing and the other three build on it. Buy Basics alone · $9
04 — FAQ
Developers learning Solana seriously — you want to actually understand the official examples instead of copy-pasting them. Coming from web2 is the normal case: you already know how to program, Solana just has different physics — accounts instead of objects, programs that hold no state — and that shift is exactly what the books teach.
Read The Rust Book for the language; read these for Solana. Basics help, mastery doesn't — if you can read a Rust function signature you can follow along, and the books explain the Rust idioms they use (ownership at account boundaries, traits, macros) as they appear. TypeScript shows up in the test suites at the same level.
No. An independent, unofficial companion to the official examples and documentation — not published by, and not speaking for, the Solana Foundation.
Barely. What exists is a self-published title from 2022 — written before Anchor's big changes — some print-on-demand filler, and one chapter of a multi-chain Rust book. No major technical publisher has a Solana book at all. Rust developers got The Book; Solana developers got browser tabs. That gap is why this series exists.
Written with heavy AI assistance (Claude), directed and reviewed by a human author. Every program re-read from source at a pinned commit, every test quoted from the repository.
EPUB and PDF files of each volume you buy, DRM-free, delivered by Gumroad — plus every future edition of those volumes at no extra cost.
The series is pinned to an exact commit, and we track the official repository continuously. When it moves meaningfully, a new edition ships — and you already own it.
Yes — each volume stands alone and is $9. Start with Basics if you're new; the bundle is simply the better deal if you'll read more than two.
You should — these books exist to make that reading stick. The repository gives you the code; the books give you the order, the concepts, the diagrams, and the explanation the code doesn't carry.
05 — Author
Hello, I am Jose Ferrer — twenty years a full-stack developer, now building on Solana. I wrote these books by reading every official example line by line. I am part of Superteam La Familia and a genesis member of Superteam Thailand.