Solana: scan solana transaction history, i.e. block by block

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Optimizing Solana Transaction History Scanning with Multi-Machine Architecture

As a developer building a service that listens and handles Solana transactions, I ran into a challenge with my multi-machine architecture. By default, both instances would process logs in isolation, which could lead to inconsistent data collection and potentially result in missed transactions.

Problem: Lack of data consistency

If one instance is down, it will continue to receive new transaction logs, but the other instance will not have access to them. This can cause issues if we rely on the same batch transactions for processing or validation.

To solve this problem, I turned to Solana’s built-in logging mechanism and implemented a simple solution to scan transaction history by block:

Scan transaction history by block

Here’s an overview of my approach:

• Configure logging: Set up both instances with the same logger to capture logs.

• Create a transaction scanning function

  : Write a separate function that listens for Solana transactions and updates our database or in-memory data structure accordingly.

This is where it gets interesting — now we can scan transaction history by block without any conflicts:

const transactions = {}; // Initialize an empty object to store all transactions
const logger = ...; // Set up a logger instance
async function logTransaction(transaction) {
try {
const transactionHash = transaction.hash;
if (!transactions[transactionHash]) {
transactions[transactionHash] = {};
}
for (const key in transactions[transactionHash]) {
transactions[transactionHash][key].push(transaction);
}
} catch (error) {
logger.error('Error processing transaction:', error);
}
}
async function scanTransactionHistoryByBlock(blockNumber) {
const blockInfo = await getBlockInfo(blockNumber);
const transactionsInThisBlock = [];
for (const entry of blockInfo.transactions) {
if (entry.type === 'transaction') {
logTransaction(entry);
}
// Add other relevant transaction data to our database
}
}

Example use case

Here is an example of how we can use this function to scan transaction history by a specific block number:

const blockchain = ...; // Assume we have access to a blockchain instance
async function main() {
const blockNumber = 12345;
await scanTransactionHistoryByBlock(blockNumber);
}

This approach ensures that our service remains consistent even when one instance is down, providing a reliable way to process and validate transactions in Solana.

metamask minting transactions