Skip to main content

Associated Token Account Program

This program defines the convention and provides the mechanism for mapping the user's wallet address to the associated token accounts they hold.

Motivation​

  • A user may own arbitrarily many token accounts belonging to the same mint which makes it difficult for other users to know which account they should send tokens to and introduces friction into many other aspects of token management. This program introduces a way to deterministically derive a token account key from a user's main System account address and a token mint address, allowing the user to create a main token account for each token they own. We call these accounts Associated Token Accounts.

  • In addition, it allows a user to send tokens to another user even if the beneficiary does not yet have a token account for that mint. Unlike a system transfer, for a token transfer to succeed the recipient must have a token account with the compatible mint already, and somebody needs to fund that token account. If the recipient must fund it first, it makes things like airdrop campaigns difficult and just generally increases the friction of token transfers. The Associated Token Account program allows the sender to create the associated token account for the receiver, so the token transfer just works.

See the SPL Token program for more information about tokens in general.

Background​

Solana's programming model and the definitions of the Solana terms used in this document are available at:

Source​

The Associated Token Account Program's source is available on GitHub.

Interface​

The Associated Token Account Program is written in Rust and available on crates.io and docs.rs.

Finding the Associated Token Account address​

The associated token account for a given wallet address is simply a program-derived account consisting of the wallet address itself and the token mint.

The get_associated_token_address Rust function may be used by clients to derive the wallet's associated token address.

The associated account address can be derived in TypeScript with:

import { PublicKey } from '@solana/web3.js';
import { TOKEN_PROGRAM_ID } from '@solana/spl-token';

const SPL_ASSOCIATED_TOKEN_ACCOUNT_PROGRAM_ID: PublicKey = new PublicKey(
  'ATokenGPvbdGVxr1b2hvZbsiqW5xWH25efTNsLJA8knL',
);

function findAssociatedTokenAddress(
    walletAddress: PublicKey,
    tokenMintAddress: PublicKey
): PublicKey {
    return PublicKey.findProgramAddressSync(
        [
            walletAddress.toBuffer(),
            TOKEN_PROGRAM_ID.toBuffer(),
            tokenMintAddress.toBuffer(),
        ],
        SPL_ASSOCIATED_TOKEN_ACCOUNT_PROGRAM_ID
    )[0];
}

Creating an Associated Token Account​

If the associated token account for a given wallet address does not yet exist, it may be created by anybody by issuing a transaction containing the instruction returned by create_associated_token_account.

Regardless of creator the new associated token account will be fully owned by the wallet, as if the wallet itself had created it.