Lesson 01 · Unit 5 · Solana
The mint account
Two switches decide who still has power over the token. Safe means welded shut.
Mint account
supply: 1,000,000,000
decimals: 9
mintAuthority: null
freezeAuthority: 9xQe…4mR
A Solana token is a mint account. The address people paste into a scanner IS that account — there is no company, no contract full of hidden logic, just one small record the network stores and everyone can read.
Read it top to bottom. supply is how many exist. decimals is only how the number is displayed — nine is common, six is just as common, and BONK uses five. It means nothing about risk either way. The last two fields are the ones that decide whether anyone still has power over the token, and they are the reason this lesson exists: mintAuthority and freezeAuthority.
Each of those two is either an address or `null`. An address means a specific person still holds that lever and can pull it without asking you. `null` means the lever was destroyed — not paused, not promised away, gone, permanently, for everybody including the founder. That is the whole difference, and it is a field you can check in five seconds before you spend anything.
Why this account is the first thing we scan
The chart, the Telegram, the logo and the roadmap are all downstream of these four lines. If the mint account is wide open, nothing built on top of it is worth reading.
Where this goes next
The two authority fields on that account get a lesson each — one can create supply out of nothing, the other can stop you moving yours.