When you deploy a Program (Solana’s version of a smart contract), you’re paying up front for its global state to live onchain forever.

This is called rent exemption.

One key architectural difference:

On Ethereum, devs often use a contract factory (an onchaincontract that deploys new instances of other contracts).

On Solana, that pattern isn’t necessary.

Once a program is deployed, it can create Program Derived Accounts (PDAs), which are custom state accounts tied to specific users or actions. You’re not redeploying code; you’re just spawning new state.

Thanks to tools like Anchor, the program’s IDL (Interface Definition Language, similar to an ABI) allows client SDKs to handle logic that would otherwise require a factory contract.

TLDR:
The developer deploys the program once.

Users interact with new accounts the program creates.

No need to redeploy anything.

So while the initial cost is high the cost to use is low for devs and users.

Easy way to think about programs on solana - imagine for a balance mapping on ethereum, each address that holds that token has a new account address created for them they pay one time rent to. All accounts on solana have one storage slot (buffer).

I did a guide on solana for ethereum people before

Easy way to think about programs on solana - imagine for a balance mapping on ethereum, each address that holds that token has a new account address created for them they pay one time rent to. All accounts on solana have one storage slot (buffer).

I did a guide on solana for ethereum people before https://read.cryptodatabytes.com/p/a-guide-to-solana-for-ethereum-analysts

Wow really solid article thanks for sharing