pinocchio-development

# Pinocchio Development Guide Build blazing-fast Solana programs with Pinocchio - a zero-dependency, zero-copy framework that delivers **88-95% compute unit reduction** and **40% smaller binaries** compared to traditional approaches. ## Overview Pinocchio is Anza's minimalist Rust library for writing Solana programs without the heavyweight `solana-program` crate. It treats incoming transaction data as a single byte slice, reading it in-place via zero-copy techniques. ### Performance Comparison | Metric | Anchor | Native (solana-program) | Pinocchio | |--------|--------|------------------------|-----------| | Token Transfer CU | ~6,000 | ~4,500 | ~600-800 | | Binary Size | Large | Medium | Small (-40%) | | Heap Allocation | Required | Required | Optional | | Dependencies | Many | Several | Zero* | *Only Solana SDK types for on-chain execution ### When to Use Pinocchio **Use Pinocchio When:** - Building high-throughput programs (DEXs, orderbooks, games) - Compute units are a bottleneck - Binary size matters (program deployment costs) - You need maximum control over memory - Building infrastructure (tokens, vaults, escrows) **Consider Anchor Instead When:** - Rapid prototyping / MVPs - Team unfamiliar with low-level Rust - Complex account relationships - Need extensive ecosystem tooling - Audit timeline is tight (more auditors know Anchor) ## Quick Start ### 1. Project Setup ```toml # Cargo.toml [package] name = "my-program" version = "0.1.0" edition = "2021" [lib] ...