From an infrastructure perspective, “transaction decoding” is not about parsing bytes. It is about reconstructing intent from execution artifacts. On Ethereum, that intent is primarily encoded through ABIs and event logs. On Solana, it emerges from instruction flows and account state mutations. Treating these two systems as variations of the same decoding problem leads to lossy abstractions and incorrect analytics. Before diving into implementation details, it is worth comparing the core primitives that each chain exposes to indexers and data pipelines. Core differences in transaction decoding Core differences in transaction decoding Aspect: Primary semantic signal Aspect: Primary semantic signal Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Event logs emitted during contract executions Solana Solana Instructions executed by programs Aspect: How user intent is expressed Aspect: How user intent is expressed Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Function calls combined with structured event emissions Solana Solana Ordered instruction sequence with explicit account inputs Aspect: Role of logs / events Aspect: Role of logs / events Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Logs are first-class semantic artifacts designed for off-chain consumption Solana Solana logMessages rarely includes helpful information for semantic artifacts Aspect: Main decoding dependency Aspect: Main decoding dependency Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Contract ABI (function and event definitions) Without the ABI, decoding a transaction into meaningful semantic actions becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible. Solana Solana Program interface (IDL when available) and instruction layout Without the IDL/ instruction layout, decoding a transaction into meaningful semantic actions still possible in some situation but it’s not make sure we decode enough instructions Aspect: Visibility of internal execution Aspect: Visibility of internal execution Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Internal calls are mostly opaque unless surfaced via logs Solana Solana Inner instructions are explicitly exposed and indexed Aspect: Native token movement Aspect: Native token movement Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Only direct native transfer are visible in transaction receipt. Internal transaction need to trace_debug with archive node, it’s more complicated and expensive Solana Solana SOL transfer, SOL balance change are exposed and indexed Aspect: Semantic signal for action identification Aspect: Semantic signal for action identification Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) In many cases, the semantic meaning of a user action can be inferred from a single, well-defined event log emitted during execution. Solana Solana Semantic decoding typically requires correlating the primary program instruction with one or more associated token transfer instructions to reconstruct the full intent. Aspect: Related token identification Aspect: Related token identification Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Token addresses are directly exposed in event logs, allowing decoding logic to identify involved tokens without extra inference. Solana Solana Transactions expose token accounts rather than the underlying token addresses. Decoding requires mapping token accounts to their corresponding token mint to determine the actual tokens involved. Aspect: Token metadata availability Aspect: Token metadata availability Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Token metadata such as name, symbol, and decimals is available on-chain via standard ERC-20/ERC-721 interfaces. Solana Solana Only decimals are reliably stored on-chain. Other metadata like name and symbol is typically stored off-chain (e.g., via metadata accounts in the Token Metadata program). Aspect: Realtime subscription & backfill Aspect: Realtime subscription & backfill Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Websocket subscriptions (eth_subscribe) can filter logs by contract address and topic, allowing indexers to receive realtime updates. Because logs are indexed and immutable, it is also straightforward to backfill historical data to decode a protocol quickly. Solana Solana Websocket subscriptions (programSubscribe) can track realtime transactions affecting a program or account, but there is no topic-like filter. Filtering must be done client-side by decoding instructions, and there is no native historical backfill, making full protocol reconstruction slower and more resource-intensive. Aspect: Protocol-level event authenticity / instruction trust Aspect: Protocol-level event authenticity / instruction trust Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Early protocols like Uniswap V2/V3 emitted event logs directly from permissionless pools. Combined with protocol clones, this made it difficult to distinguish legitimate protocol events from fake or malicious logs. Modern protocols such as Balancer and Uniswap V4 mitigated this by emitting event logs through a single pool manager, centralizing the semantic signal and improving reliability for indexers. Solana Solana All user actions interact directly with the protocol’s main program ID, similar to Balancer or Uniswap V4. This design makes it practically impossible to fake user actions by crafting instructions, because malicious transactions cannot target the main program ID without breaking protocol integrity. Aspect: Dependency on off-chain storage / database Aspect: Dependency on off-chain storage / database Ethereum (EVM) Ethereum (EVM) Most transactions can be fully decoded using only on-chain data, without relying on any off-chain storage or local database. Exception: Protocols like Uniswap V4, Ekubo, and similar, require tracking pool token lists from the pool creation event. Without storing this information locally, it is nearly impossible to query on-chain later to reconstruct the pool tokens and decode subsequent events. Solana Solana All transactions can be decoded entirely using on-chain accounts and instruction data, without relying on any off-chain storage. Since all user actions interact directly with the main program ID, full semantic intent is available on-chain, making decoding reliable without any database. I hope this comparison of Ethereum and Solana transaction decoding from a technical perspective was helpful. We’re continuously working on improving our understanding and decoding infrastructure, and your feedback is invaluable. If you have thoughts, suggestions, or corrections, please leave a comment below — we’ll carefully review all input and update this article accordingly. Thank you for reading!

This story contains AI-generated text. The author has used AI either for research, to generate outlines, or write the text itself. 

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Transaction Decoding on Ethereum (EVM Blockchains) vs Solana: A Technical Perspective

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