Lesson 02 · Unit 5 · Solana
Mint authority
If this one is live, every other number on the page is provisional.
The mint authority is permission to create supply out of nothing. Whoever holds it sends one instruction and new tokens appear in a wallet of their choosing. No vote, no announcement, no cost beyond a fraction of a cent in fees — and nothing you can do about it after the fact.
What it costs you
A live mint authority means the supply you divided your holding by can be multiplied at any moment, without a vote and without notice.
Follow the arithmetic once and you will never forget it. You own 1% of a one-billion supply. Nine billion more are minted into the team's wallet: you still hold the same tokens, but now they are 0.1% of the supply, and the money in the pool — which never grew — has to cover ten times the claims. You were diluted by 90% without a single trade happening.
This is why "they kept it for future utility" is not a reassurance. Utility is a plan; the authority is a power. The only version of that promise you can verify is a revoked authority, and revoking costs the team one transaction. When a team wants to keep the switch, believe the switch — not the sentence next to it.
Launch
Supply fixed at 1B, authority kept 'for future utility'
+6 weeks
Price holds, holders grow
+7 weeks
9B minted into the team wallet
Where this goes next
This is the switch behind the supply question from chapter 1 — and the reason a supply number has to be read next to its distribution.