Indexing Basics

8 examples to get you started with Solana indexing - 5 basic and 3 intermediate.

Prerequisites

• RPC provider or self-hosted node for backfill
• Database (Postgres common) for persisted index state
• Understanding of Core RPC Methods

Basic Examples

1. Why RPC Alone Breaks at Scale

Wallet history via getSignaturesForAddress paginates thousands of HTTP calls.

# Slow for whales - each page is one RPC round trip
solana confirm -v $(solana transaction-history <PUBKEY> 2>/dev/null | head -1) 2>/dev/null || true

• RPC is request/response - no durable query layer for SQL analytics.
• Rate limits cap historical backfills during product launch.
• Indexers write once, query many from your database.

Related: Pagination & Efficiency - RPC limits

2. Indexer Data Flow

Ingest, parse, store, serve.

Validator → Geyser/Yellowstone/Webhook → Parser → Postgres → API

• Ingestion is append-only slot-ordered events.
• Parser maps instructions to domain rows (swaps, votes, mints).
• API serves paginated queries to apps.

Related: Building an Indexer - implementation

3. Backfill vs Live Stream

Historical catch-up then tail new slots.

# Conceptual: replay slots 250000000..latest from archived ledger or RPC

• Backfill uses getBlock / getTransaction or provider archives.
• Live stream uses Geyser or WebSocket after cursor catches tip.
• Store last processed slot for crash recovery.

4. Idempotent Writes

Use natural keys so replays do not duplicate rows.

INSERT INTO transfers (signature, idx, amount)
VALUES ($1, $2, $3)
ON CONFLICT (signature, idx) DO NOTHING;

• Transactions have unique signatures; instruction index disambiguates inner ix.
• Reorgs are rare at confirmed but design for slot rollback flags on critical finance.
• Replay from slot N after outage must be safe.

5. Parse with IDL

Decode instruction data deterministically.

// Concept: use generated client or anchor discriminator match
// if data[..8] == DEPOSIT_DISCRIMINATOR { ... }

• Anchor IDL discriminators identify instruction variants.
• Codama-generated parsers keep schema in sync with program releases.
• Never key business logic on log string parsing alone.

Related: Parsing Program Data - decode detail

Intermediate Examples

6. Geyser Plugin Hook

Validator streams account/tx updates to your sink.

# Validator flag (operator setup)
agave-validator --geyser-plugin-config geyser.json

• Plugins receive firehose at validator speed.
• You filter to programs you care about early to save CPU.
• See Geyser Plugins.

7. Yellowstone gRPC Consumer

High-throughput Rust/Go consumers subscribe to filtered streams.

# Consumer connects to provider Yellowstone endpoint
# Filter by owner program id and account memcmp

• Lower latency than polling RPC for indexers.
• Requires managed provider or self-hosted stack.
• See Yellowstone gRPC.

8. Webhook Ingestion

Provider pushes events to your HTTPS endpoint.

# Helius webhook -> POST https://api.yourapp.com/helius

• No long-lived WebSocket server required on your side.
• Verify signatures on webhook payloads per provider docs.
• See Webhooks.

Stack versions: This page was written for Agave 4.1.1, Solana CLI 3.0.10, Anchor 0.32.1, anchor-lang 0.32.1, Rust 1.91.1, @solana/kit 7.0.0, Surfpool 0.12.0, and LiteSVM 0.6.x. NzA2MjAyfDQ4M29pZ2N8b2kuc2VkaXVnZWRvYw==