Building Transaction Messages

Compose versioned transaction messages with fee payer, lifetime, and instructions.

Recipe

Quick-reference recipe card - copy-paste ready.

import {
  createTransactionMessage,
  pipe,
  setTransactionMessageFeePayerSigner,
  setTransactionMessageLifetimeUsingBlockhash,
  appendTransactionMessageInstruction,
} from "@solana/kit";

When to reach for this:

• Any custom instruction bundle (DeFi, NFT, game).
• Multi-instruction atomic transactions.
• Version 0 messages with lookup tables.
• Client-side flows before wallet signing.

Working Example

import {
  createSolanaRpc,
  createTransactionMessage,
  pipe,
  setTransactionMessageFeePayerSigner,
  setTransactionMessageLifetimeUsingBlockhash,
  appendTransactionMessageInstructions,
  address,
} from "@solana/kit";
import {
  getSetComputeUnitLimitInstruction,
  getSetComputeUnitPriceInstruction,
} from "@solana-program/compute-budget";
 
const rpc = createSolanaRpc(process.env.RPC_URL!);
const { value: blockhash } = await rpc.getLatestBlockhash().send();
 
const budgetIxs = [
  getSetComputeUnitLimitInstruction({ units: 200_000 }),
  getSetComputeUnitPriceInstruction({ microLamports: 5_000n }),
];
 
const message = pipe(
  createTransactionMessage({ version: 0 }),
  (m) => setTransactionMessageFeePayerSigner(walletSigner, m),
  (m) => setTransactionMessageLifetimeUsingBlockhash(blockhash, m),
  (m) => appendTransactionMessageInstructions(budgetIxs, m),
  (m) => appendTransactionMessageInstructions(programIxs, m)
);

What this demonstrates:

• Compute budget instructions typically come first.
• pipe keeps transforms readable and immutable.
• Blockhash lifetime must be fresh per submit.

Deep Dive

How It Works

• Messages list accounts, instructions, and signatures required on wire.
• Version 0 enables address lookup tables to shrink static keys.
• Fee payer pays network fee; additional signers sign if writable/signing.
• Lifetime can be blockhash or durable nonce (advanced).

Message Checklist

Gotchas

• Stale blockhash - confirmation fails after ~60-90s. Fix: refetch and rebuild.
• Missing signer in message - simulation error. Fix: attach all required signers.
• Instruction order - budget before program ixs. Fix: prepend compute budget.
• Account list mismatch - program expects different metas. Fix: use generated builders.
• v0 without ALT when needed - tx too large. Fix: see Address Lookup Tables.

Alternatives

FAQs

Related

• Signing & Sending - sign and confirm
• Address Lookup Tables - shrink v0 txs
• Codecs & Serialization - custom data

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.

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