made by :tsu19sfv_400x400:Akshit

Ever wondered how to create your own token on Solana? This guide will walk you through the entire process from setting up your environment to minting and transferring your tokens. Let's dive in!

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following:

• Solana CLI installed – Follow this guide to install it on your system.
• spl-token CLI installed – This is required for creating and managing tokens. Install it with:

cargo install spl-token-cli

1️⃣ Set Up Your Project

Create a new folder for your token project and move into it:

mkdir solana-token
cd solana-token

Keeping everything in one place makes things a lot easier to manage.

2️⃣ Generate a Keypair for the Mint Authority

The mint authority controls token creation, metadata updates, and freezing (if needed). Let’s generate a keypair where the public key starts with cat, just for uniqueness:

solana-keygen grind --starts-with cat:1

You'll see something like this:

cattYM5D21m8EUwobScshwHhMgqPr3tXWYCuLUYo95W.json

Now, set this keypair as your default so the CLI uses it automatically:

solana config set --keypair cattYM5D21m8EUwobScshwHhMgqPr3tXWYCuLUYo95W.json