What Are Lamports? Solana's Smallest Unit of SOL

A lamport is the smallest denomination of SOL, named after Leslie Lamport, the computer scientist whose work on distributed systems helped inspire Solana's architecture. One SOL equals exactly one billion (1,000,000,000) lamports.

Lamports and Transaction Fees

All Solana fees are denominated in lamports. The base fee is 5,000 lamports per signature. Priority fees are specified in micro-lamports per compute unit, where 1 micro-lamport = 0.000001 lamports. Working in lamports (rather than SOL) prevents floating-point rounding errors in fee calculations.

Lamports and Rent

Solana accounts must maintain a minimum SOL balance to remain rent-exempt. This minimum balance, called the rent-exempt threshold, is also calculated in lamports. For a 128-byte account, the rent-exempt minimum is approximately 890,880 lamports (0.00089088 SOL).

Lamport Precision

Because 1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 lamports, Solana can express transaction values with nine decimal places of precision. This makes Solana suitable for micropayments and high-frequency applications where sub-cent accuracy matters.

Historical Context

Leslie Lamport invented the Paxos consensus algorithm and the concept of logical clocks, both foundational to distributed computing. Solana's Proof of History mechanism, which provides a verifiable sequence of time for the network, draws conceptually from Lamport's work on ordering events in distributed systems.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many lamports is 1 SOL?

1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 (one billion) lamports. This is analogous to how 1 Bitcoin = 100,000,000 satoshis.

What is the Solana base fee in lamports?

The Solana base fee is 5,000 lamports per signature on every transaction.

Are lamports the same as micro-lamports?

No. 1 lamport = 1,000,000 micro-lamports. Micro-lamports are used when specifying compute unit prices for priority fees.