Payment flows on Solana include five core concepts:
- wallets for sender and recipient
- stablecoins as transferred asset type (USDC, USDG, …)
- token accounts to hold balances
- fees for transactions and account creation
- transactions to execute the transfer
| Light | SPL / Token 2022 | |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer | ~$0.001 | ~$0.001 |
| Create Token Account | ~$0.001 (0.00001 SOL) | ~$0.30 (0.0029 SOL) |
| Transfer + Create Token Account | ~$0.001 (0.00001 SOL) | ~$0.30 (0.0029 SOL) |
How the cost reduction works
How the cost reduction works
The token standard pays rent-exemption cost for you. To prevent griefing, “rent” is paid over time to keep an account in memory. This is dealt with under the hood in a way that doesn’t disrupt the UX of what your users are used to with SPL-token.Rent-exemption: paid by a rent sponsor PDA.Top-ups: paid by the fee payer.The 
feePayer on the transaction bumps a small virtual rent balance (766 lamports by default)
on each write to keep the account active (hot balance).
Set your application as the fee payer so users never interact with SOL.Hot-Cold Lifecycle of Accounts.Accounts get auto-compressed (cold balance) when the virtual rent balance goes below a threshold (eg 24h without write bump).
The cold account’s state is cryptographically preserved on the Solana ledger.
Users only interact with hot accounts and load the cold balance in-flight when using the account again.You can abstract fees entirely so users never interact with SOL. See gasless transactions
to sponsor rent top-ups and transaction fees.
API Comparison
Transactions with Light Token API’s mirror SPL / Token 2022, so you can build transactions with a similar developer experience. For example, here is the creation of an associated token account:Interoperability
The Light Token APIs cover every SPL Token operation and adds extra capabilities:| Category | What it does |
|---|---|
| Cross-program dispatch | Interface methods (e.g., transferInterface) auto-detect the token program and dispatch to SPL, Token 2022, or Light Token. |
| Unified balance | getAtaInterface returns a unified balance for a given mint, aggregating Light Token (hot + cold), SPL, and Token 2022 sources. |
| Wrap / Unwrap | For interoperability with applications that don’t support Light Token yet, you can wrap / unwrap SPL or Token 2022 tokens into Light Token associated token accounts and back. |
Token Extensions
Token extensions introduce optional features you can add to a token mint or token account through extra instructions. Light Token supports most Token 2022 extensions.How Extensions work with Light Token
Start Integrating
Payment Skill for Agents
Agent skill
Agent skill
Use the payments agent skill to add light-token payment support to your project:For orchestration, install the general skill: