Solana Bytes

The byte-level field guide to Solana accounts. Read any account's raw data as a color-coded, decoded hex dump, study the canonical byte layouts of every common account and instruction, or play the Byte Challenge to test your eye.

Live at bytes.solrengine.org · available in English and Spanish. Built with SolRengine and Rails 8 (originally for the Colosseum Frontier Hackathon, now a live product).

Three ways in

1. Learn — a 52-page reference that decodes every common Solana account, instruction, and concept byte by byte. The thing you wish existed when you first stared at a raw account.
2. Hex Visualizer — paste any account address and see its live bytes color-coded and decoded, field by field.
3. Byte Challenge — a game: find a specific field in a hex dump, build streaks, climb the leaderboard.

Learn — the byte-level reference

The flagship. 52 pages across 11 categories, each with a one-line definition, a byte-layout table, common gotchas, links to the source program, and a real cached mainnet example:

Category	Covers
SPL Token	Mint, Token Account, Multisig, instructions
Token-2022	Base layout + the TLV mechanism + all 15 extensions (transfer fees, interest, confidential transfers, metadata, hooks, …)
Staking & Voting	Stake Account, Vote Account
Metaplex	Token Metadata, Master/Print editions, delegate records
Compressed NFTs	Bubblegum tree config + leaf schema
Transactions	Legacy + v0 anatomy, compact-u16, signatures & blockhash, Address Lookup Tables
Native instructions	System, Compute Budget, Stake, Vote
Programs	BPF Upgradeable, ProgramData, Buffer, raw ELF
Anchor	Account + instruction discriminators, space & rent
Addresses & PDAs	PDA derivation, canonical bumps, ATAs
Encoding	COption vs Option vs OptionalNonZeroPubkey, Borsh vs bincode, rent & account size

Content is plain Markdown + YAML frontmatter in content/learn/ — structural facts (offsets, sizes, program IDs) live in the base file; a <slug>.<locale>.md overlay carries only translated prose, so byte-level facts can never drift between languages. Canonical URLs are /learn/<category>/<slug>.

Hex Visualizer

Paste any Solana account address and see its raw bytes as an interactive hex dump. Every byte range is color-coded and decoded — hover to see field names, values, and offsets. Decoders cover SPL Mints, Token Accounts, Token-2022 with extensions, Stake/Vote accounts, BPF programs (full ELF header), and more.

Byte Challenge

An educational game: you're shown a hex dump and asked to find a specific field (e.g. "Mint Authority"). All cells start gray — click the right bytes. Build streaks, earn stars, compete on the leaderboard. 8-bit sound effects included. Guest play works; connect a wallet (Sign-In with Solana) to save results.

Bilingual (English + Spanish)

The entire site is localized. English is the default at the bare path; Spanish lives under /es (e.g. /es/learn/spl-token/mint) with a language switcher in the nav and on the landing page. Untranslated areas fall back to English. Powered by Rails i18n with locale-in-path routing.

Features

• Interactive hex dump with region decoding and hover tooltips
• 52-page bilingual byte-level reference (/learn)
• Byte Challenge game with streak mode, 3 lives, star ratings, 8-bit sound (Web Audio API)
• 8-bit pixel art design (Press Start 2P font, inline SVG pixel icons, pixel mosaic background)
• Wallet authentication via SIWS (SolRengine Auth Engine); guest play supported
• Leaderboard with top streaks (anti-cheat via signed challenge tokens)
• Network selector (mainnet, devnet, testnet)
• SPA navigation via Turbo Frames
• Content Security Policy, rate limiting, XSS protection
• 153 tests covering decoders, controllers, presenters, content loading, i18n, and game integrity

Stack

• Ruby on Rails 8 (Hotwire, Turbo, Stimulus)
• SolRengine — Rails framework for Solana dapps
• solrengine-rpc — Solana JSON-RPC client
• solrengine-auth — SIWS wallet authentication engine
• Tailwind CSS 4 + esbuild
• Kramdown (GFM) for the /learn reference content
• SQLite (via Solid Queue/Cache/Cable)
• Press Start 2P (self-hosted from public/fonts/)
• Sentry (error tracking), Rack::Attack (rate limiting), Ahoy (privacy-first analytics)
• Kamal for deploys

Privacy & Analytics

We use Ahoy for self-hosted analytics. We log: country (geo-IP only, no IP stored), browser, OS, user_agent, referrer, and pageview events. We do not store IP addresses, precise location (city/lat/long), or set tracking cookies. Visit and event data are automatically purged after 90 days.

Setup

bin/setup
cp .env.example .env
bin/dev

Open http://localhost:3000.

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
SOLANA_NETWORK	mainnet-beta	Default network
SOLANA_RPC_MAINNET_URL	public RPC	Mainnet RPC endpoint
SOLANA_RPC_DEVNET_URL	public RPC	Devnet RPC endpoint
SOLANA_RPC_TESTNET_URL	public RPC	Testnet RPC endpoint
APP_DOMAIN	—	Domain for SIWS auth (production)
SENTRY_DSN	—	Sentry error tracking (production only)

Try These Accounts

Address	What You'll See
EPjFWdd5AufqSSqeM2qN1xzybapC8G4wEGGkZwyTDt1v	USDC Mint — authority, supply, 6 decimals
TokenkegQfeZyiNwAJbNbGKPFXCWuBvf9Ss623VQ5DA	Token Program — full ELF header
2b1kV6DkPAnxd5ixfnxCpjxmKwqjjaYmCZfHsFu24GXo	PYUSD — Token-2022 with metadata + extensions

How It Works

Learn reference

AccountTaxonomy loads the Markdown files in content/learn/, parsing YAML frontmatter for structure and rendering the body with Kramdown. For a non-default locale it overlays the matching <slug>.<locale>.md translation (name/summary/body only) on top of the canonical base file, falling back to English when no translation exists.

Hex Visualizer

1. User pastes a Solana address
2. Server fetches the account via solrengine-rpc (getAccountInfo base64)
3. AccountPresenter decodes metadata + raw bytes into hex rows (O(1) offset lookup)
4. RegionDecoder identifies byte ranges by owner program (separate module)
5. Stimulus hex-viewer controller handles hover/tap highlighting and tooltips

Byte Challenge

1. Random mainnet account loaded (SPL Mints + Token Accounts)
2. Random field selected as target (e.g. "Supply", "Mint Authority")
3. Server generates a signed challenge token carrying streak, total_stars, user_id, and issued_at (HMAC via Rails MessageVerifier)
4. All cells rendered gray — player clicks to guess
5. 3 wrong clicks = game over. Correct = streak +1, next challenge via signed token
6. Results saved to the leaderboard if connected via wallet. The save endpoint requires the token's user_id to match the authenticated user (no token donation), rejects tokens older than 10 minutes (no replay), and is idempotent via a SHA256 digest of the token (Turbo retries don't duplicate rows)

Known Limitations

Game integrity — Challenge target answers are present in the rendered DOM (data attributes), and star ratings are computed client-side. A player with DevTools can solve any challenge instantly. The leaderboard is intended as social/educational, not competitive. A future version will move guess validation server-side via a signed-offset endpoint and remove the answer from the DOM.

Partial Spanish coverage — The reference, landing, About, Byte Challenge landing, leaderboard, stats, and navigation are fully translated. The live hex-viewer chrome, the in-game board, and the login page still fall back to English under /es.

License

MIT