RPC: your own, not the public one

Solana's public endpoint exists for trying things, not for demonstrating them: it rate-limits you (429) exactly when somebody is watching — a demo, a user, an investor.

How to get an endpoint, in order:

1. You are in a Superteam Argentina programme (the local hackathon, Path to Solana, a cohort): there is a Triton One API key for your team. Ask the mentors or the programme's channel for it. Do not push it to GitHub.
2. You want your own Triton account: triton.one — pay-as-you-go, no free tier, with a US$125 minimum deposit that lasts 12 months and covers every product.
3. You want to start free: the free plan at Helius or QuickNode is enough for the first weeks. The configuration below is the same; only the URL changes.

The next page compares what each provider offers.

Endpoint format (you get it with the key):

HTTPS:  https://<your-endpoint>.rpcpool.com/<API_KEY>
WSS:    wss://<your-endpoint>.rpcpool.com/<API_KEY>

Where to put it

.env.local (frontend) — and add it to .gitignore:

NEXT_PUBLIC_SOLANA_RPC=https://<your-endpoint>.rpcpool.com/<API_KEY>
NEXT_PUBLIC_SOLANA_WSS=wss://<your-endpoint>.rpcpool.com/<API_KEY>

Careful with NEXT_PUBLIC_: anything that starts with it ships to every visitor's browser, API key included. For the hackathon that is fine — the key is rate-limited and gets rotated afterwards — but in production the keyed endpoint sits behind your backend, or you use a domain-restricted key from the Triton dashboard.

Anchor.toml gets committed, so the key does not go there. Leave cluster = "devnet" and pass the keyed URL from outside:

anchor deploy --provider.cluster "https://<your-endpoint>.rpcpool.com/<API_KEY>"
ANCHOR_PROVIDER_URL=https://<your-endpoint>.rpcpool.com/<API_KEY> anchor test --skip-local-validator --skip-deploy

CLI:

solana config set --url https://<your-endpoint>.rpcpool.com/<API_KEY>

Client with @solana/kit:

import { createSolanaRpc, createSolanaRpcSubscriptions } from "@solana/kit";

const rpc = createSolanaRpc(process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SOLANA_RPC!);
const rpcSubscriptions = createSolanaRpcSubscriptions(process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SOLANA_WSS!);

Reading history (every transaction of an account, the tokens in a wallet, your program's events): do not iterate over blocks. Use your RPC provider's APIs (Triton has Yellowstone gRPC for streams; Helius has DAS and webhooks) or an indexer. Reading the onchain past is not a SELECT.

Docs: docs.triton.one · alternatives with hackathon discounts: Helius, FluxRPC, QuickNode.