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Overview

zkCompression integrates Light Protocol to enable ZK Compression on Solana, allowing you to compress SPL tokens and reduce storage costs by up to 5000x.

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How It Works

  1. Compress: Regular SPL tokens are converted to compressed tokens stored in a Merkle tree state.
  2. Store: Only the Merkle root is stored on-chain, dramatically reducing costs.
  3. Decompress: Compressed tokens can be decompressed back to regular SPL tokens at any time.

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Cost Comparison

OperationRegular SPLCompressed
Token Account~0.002 SOL~0.00002 SOL
Transfer~0.000005 SOL~0.000001 SOL
Storage per token~165 bytes~0.165 bytes
Compressed tokens are 5000x cheaper to create and 98% cheaper to transfer.

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Terminal Commands

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Show Help

zk light help
Shows all available Light Protocol commands and cost savings info.

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Compress SOL

zk light compress <amount> --from <wallet>
Convert regular SOL to compressed SOL. Compressed SOL has NO rent costs. Example: 
zk light compress 0.1 --from mysol

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Decompress SOL

zk light decompress <amount> --from <wallet>
Convert compressed SOL back to regular SOL. Example: 
zk light decompress 0.1 --from mysol

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Create Compressed Token

zk light create-token --decimals <n> --from <wallet>
Create a new compressed SPL token mint (5000x cheaper than standard). Example: 
zk light create-token --decimals 9 --from mysol

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Mint Compressed Tokens

zk light mint <token> <amount> <address> --from <wallet>
Mint compressed tokens to a specified address.

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Transfer Compressed Tokens

zk light transfer <token> <amount> <address> --from <wallet>
Transfer compressed tokens to another address.

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Check Balance

zk light balance <address> [token]
Check compressed token balances for an address.

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Account Info

zk light account-info <address>
Get detailed compressed account information including all token balances.

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Airdrop

zk light airdrop <token> <amount> --recipients <addr1,addr2,...> --from <wallet>
Mass token distribution to multiple recipients.

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View Token Portfolio

zk tokens
Display unified portfolio view of all tokens (regular + compressed): 
Token Portfolio
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Token           Balance      Type         Mint
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
USDC            1,234.56     Regular      EPjFWdd5...
USDC            500.00       [C]          EPjFWdd5...
SOL             10.5         Regular      So11111...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[C] = Compressed Token

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API Reference

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Compress SOL

POST /api/light/compress
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "amount": 0.1,
  "walletId": "wallet-uuid"
}
Response: 
{
  "success": true,
  "txHash": "5abc...",
  "amount": 0.1,
  "costSavings": {
    "standardRent": 2039280,
    "compressedRent": 0
  }
}

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Decompress SOL

POST /api/light/decompress
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "amount": 0.1,
  "walletId": "wallet-uuid"
}
Response: 
{
  "success": true,
  "txHash": "6def...",
  "amount": 0.1
}

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Create Compressed Token

POST /api/light/create-token
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "decimals": 9,
  "walletId": "wallet-uuid"
}
Response: 
{
  "success": true,
  "mintAddress": "CompMint123...",
  "txHash": "7ghi..."
}

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Get Account Info

GET /api/light/account-info/<address>
Response: 
{
  "address": "YourAddress123...",
  "compressedBalance": "0.5",
  "tokenBalances": [
    {
      "mint": "EPjFWdd5...",
      "symbol": "USDC",
      "balance": "100.00"
    }
  ]
}

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Technical Details

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Light Protocol Integration

zkCompression uses the following Light Protocol packages: 
import { Rpc, createRpc } from "@lightprotocol/stateless.js";
import { compress, decompress } from "@lightprotocol/compressed-token";

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Wallet Security

zkCompression implements wallet mutex locking and private key zeroization for security:
  1. Mutex locking prevents concurrent wallet access
  2. Private keys are zeroized from memory after use
  3. Automatic retry polling for RPC indexer sync
  4. Auto-create Associated Token Account during decompression

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RPC Configuration

zkCompression uses Helius RPC with Light Protocol extensions: 
const connection = createRpc(
  process.env.HELIUS_RPC_URL,
  process.env.HELIUS_RPC_URL,  // Compression RPC
  process.env.HELIUS_RPC_URL   // Prover RPC
);

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Error Handling

ErrorCauseSolution
Account not foundATA doesn’t existAuto-created during decompression
Insufficient balanceNot enough tokensCheck balance with zk tokens
RPC indexer syncIndexer lagAutomatic retry polling handles this

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Example: Full Compression Flow

# 1. Check current balances
> zk tokens
USDC: 1000.00 (Regular)

# 2. Compress 0.1 SOL
> zk light compress 0.1 --from mysol
Compressing SOL...
Transaction: 5abc...

COMPRESSION SUCCESSFUL
  Amount:    0.1 SOL
  TxHash:    5abc...

  RENT SAVINGS:
  Standard:     2039280 lamports
  Compressed:   0 lamports (NO RENT!)

# 3. Check account info
> zk light account-info <your-address>

COMPRESSED ACCOUNT INFO
  Address:         <your-address>
  SOL Balance:     0.1 SOL

# 4. Decompress when needed
> zk light decompress 0.05 --from mysol
Decompressing SOL...
Transaction: 6def...

DECOMPRESSION SUCCESSFUL
  Amount:    0.05 SOL
  TxHash:    6def...