Introduction to Anchor

What is Anchor?

Anchor is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform built on the Solana blockchain network. It allows for seamless transactions between different DeFi applications and services, creating a unified DeFi ecosystem. Anchor enables users to trade, borrow, lend, and earn interest on digital assets, all through a single platform. Additionally, Anchor's use of Solana's high-speed blockchain infrastructure ensures fast and efficient transactions.

Installing Anchor

Anchor version manager is a tool for using multiple versions of the anchor-cli. It will require the same dependencies as building from source. It is recommended you uninstall the NPM package if you have it installed.

1. Install avm using Cargo. Note this will replace your anchor binary if you had one installed.

cargo install --git <https://github.com/coral-xyz/anchor> avm --locked --force

1. Install the latest version of the CLI using avm, and then set it to be the version to use.

   avm install latest
   avm use latest

2. Verify installation

   anchor --version

Creating a Project

To initialize a new project, simply run:

anchor init <new-workspace-name>

This creates a new anchor workspace you can move into. The following are some of the important files in the folder:

• The .anchor folder: It includes the most recent program logs and a local ledger that is used for testing

• The app folder: An empty folder that you can use to hold your frontend if you use a monorepo

• The programs folder: This folder contains your programs. It can contain multiple but initially only contains a program with the same name as <new-workspace-name>. This program already contains a lib.rs file with some sample code.

• The tests folder: The folder that contains your E2E tests. It will already include a file that tests the sample code in the programs/<new-workspace-name>.

• The migrations folder: In this folder you can save your deploy and migration scripts for your programs.

• The Anchor.toml file: This file configures workspace wide settings for your programs. Initially, it configures

  • The addresses of your programs on localnet ([programs.localnet])

  • A registry your program can be pushed to ([registry])

  • A provider which can be used in your tests ([provider])

  • Scripts that Anchor executes for you ([scripts]). The test script is run when running anchor test. You can run your own scripts with anchor run <script_name>.