Lamport

The smallest fractional unit of Solana’s native digital asset, SOL, equivalent to 0.000000001 SOL (one-billionth of a SOL).

What is Lamport?

A Lamport is the smallest denomination of SOL, Solana’s native digital asset, where 1 SOL equals 1 billion (10^9) Lamports. Named after computer scientist Leslie Lamport, it serves as the fundamental unit for transactions, account initialization, and fee calculations on the Solana blockchain. For example, a transaction fee of $0.00025 (at 2025 SOL prices) equates to approximately 5,000 Lamports, and creating a new account typically requires 0.001-0.002 SOL (1-2 million Lamports) for rent-exempt storage. As of September 2025, with SOL’s high transaction throughput (up to 65,000 TPS), Lamports enable precise microtransactions, critical for DeFi and NFT applications.

In the context of Solana’s compute budget, prioritization fees are calculated using micro-Lamports (1 micro-Lamport = 0.000001 Lamports, or 10^-15 SOL). These fees allow users to increase a transaction’s Compute Unit (CU) allocation—up to 1.4 million CUs per transaction—for faster processing during network congestion. For instance, a user might pay a fee in micro-Lamports per CU to prioritize a complex DeFi swap on platforms like Raydium. This system, refined in 2022 with dynamic fee markets, helps manage network load, as seen during high-traffic events like the 2021 NFT minting surge. Wallets like Phantom display balances in SOL but handle Lamports internally for precision, ensuring seamless user experiences.