My Brain on Databases vs. Solana: A Beginner’s Reality Check

Day 11 of #100DaysOfSolana flipped my database instincts upside down. I spent years thinking in tables, rows, and SQL queries but Solana’s account model is a completely different beast. Every single piece of state, whether a user’s wallet or executable program code, lives as a publicly readable account on a global ledger. There are no joins, no server-side filtering, and no admin overrides. Access control is baked into the runtime: only the owning program can modify an account’s data, and only w