Lamport: Solana's Atomic Unit of Currency
The lamport is named after Leslie Lamport, the computer scientist known for his work on distributed systems — the theoretical foundation that enables Solana's high-throughput consensus mechanism. One SOL is divisible into exactly 1,000,000,000 (one billion) lamports.
Key Facts About Lamports
- 1 SOL = 1,000,000,000 lamports
- 1 lamport = 0.000000001 SOL
- Smallest possible SOL denomination
- All on-chain values are stored in lamports
- Base tx fee: 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL)
Lamports vs Other Crypto Units
- 1 Satoshi (BTC) = 0.00000001 BTC (8 decimals)
- 1 Lamport (SOL) = 0.000000001 SOL (9 decimals)
- 1 Wei (ETH) = 0.000000000000000001 ETH (18 decimals)
- Lamports offer 1 more decimal than Bitcoin
- Much fewer decimals than Ethereum (easier UX)
Leslie Lamport's contributions to distributed computing — including the Paxos consensus algorithm and logical clocks — directly influenced Proof of History, the timestamp mechanism at the heart of Solana's performance.
Where Lamports Are Used
Lamports appear throughout the Solana ecosystem: transaction fees, account rent, staking rewards, program deposits, and token swaps all use lamports as the native unit. Any time you interact with the Solana blockchain at a protocol level, you are working in lamports.
- Fees: 5,000 lamports per signature (base)
- Rent: ~3,480 lamports per byte per year
- Account balance: stored and transferred in lamports
- Staking rewards: distributed in lamports each epoch