What Is PDA in Solana?
A Program Derived Address (PDA) is an address deterministically derived from a program ID and a set of seeds. Unlike regular addresses, PDAs have no corresponding private key — only the program that derived them can sign for them.
How PDAs work
PDAs are generated using findProgramAddress(seeds, programId), which hashes the seeds with the program ID and finds a point that does not lie on the Ed25519 curve. This guarantees no private key exists for the address.
import { getProgramDerivedAddress, getUtf8Encoder } from "@solana/kit";
const [pda, bump] = await getProgramDerivedAddress({
programAddress: programId,
seeds: [getUtf8Encoder().encode("user-data"), userPubkey.toBytes()],
});The bump is a single byte (0-255) added to the seeds to find an off-curve point.
Why PDAs exist
- Deterministic addresses. Given the same seeds and program ID, the PDA is always the same. This lets clients compute account addresses without querying the network.
- Program-controlled signing. Only the owning program can sign transactions for a PDA, enabling secure on-chain logic without private key management.
- Data storage. PDAs are commonly used to store program state: user profiles, configuration, pool data.
Common patterns
| Pattern | Seeds |
|---|---|
| User-specific data | ["user", user_pubkey] |
| Token vault | ["vault", mint_pubkey] |
| Global config | ["config"] |
| Order book entry | ["order", market_pubkey, order_id] |
Sources
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