Quicknode Releases New Book, “Building Financial Software on Solana”
Quicknode Releases New Book, “Building Financial Software on Solana”
A new book by Mike MacCana on how exchanges, lending markets, funds, and options trading platforms work as programs on Solana. Free to read online.
November 10, 2026 — 5 min read
Quicknode has released “Building Financial Software on Solana”, a new book by Mike MacCana that explains how real financial products work as programs on Solana, including exchanges, lending markets, funds and options trading platforms. The full book is free to read at solanabook.org, and a paperback is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
What the book covers
Most material about Solana explains how the network works. “Building Financial Software on Solana” is about what you can build on it.
The book runs to more than 300 pages with 115 diagrams. Every account, transaction and movement of money is drawn in one visual language, so readers can see how a program works independently of reading any code.
Part I covers the fundamentals: Solana’s accounts, tokens and time, then the arithmetic of money, how real-world prices get onchain safely, and how to defend against the attacks that have drained real markets.
Part II builds ten complete, tested programs. Each chapter takes a familiar financial product and shows, step by step, how it runs onchain:
Exchanges: an order book that matches buyers and sellers like NYSE or NASDAQ, a constant-product AMM that prices trades from a pool of tokens, and a prop AMM where a market maker quotes its own capital at oracle prices
Lending: how interest rates are set, how interest builds up every second, and how liquidations protect lenders
Funds: an onchain managed fund, covering how deposits turn into fund shares and how the fund rebalances its holdings
Options, perpetual futures and betting markets: how payoffs, funding rates, margin and pooled bets are calculated and settled
Payments, escrow and fundraising: moving stablecoins such as USDC safely between parties who don’t trust each other, and all-or-nothing crowdfunding
The examples use familiar assets that readers know and care about, such as USDC and tokenized stocks.
Written so non-developers can follow along
You don’t need to be an engineer to get value from the book. It is written so that product managers, analysts, founders and finance professionals can follow what each program does: how an instruction is handled, how interest is calculated, and how shares in a liquidity pool are created. Developers can build on every program in the book: the code is open source in the companion repository, where it is tested and kept up to date.
No equivalent for any other chain
There is currently no book, training course or video series that comprehensively shows how financial products work for any other blockchain. For teams deciding where to build financial applications, that gives Solana a head start.
Since its release on October 13, the book has reached #3 in Amazon’s Hot New Releases for Financial Engineering, ranking alongside a wave of new AI trading titles.
What readers are saying
“If this book had existed sooner, I would have been very early to Solana. It’s still very early. First inning. All financial and AI players need to pick this book up and start building.”
Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Cofounder of Venmo
“If you’re building on Solana, or want to learn to do so, Mike has written a great book that covers how Solana and financial programs work in great detail and with many examples. I think this will be a super valuable resource for anyone wanting to learn about building financial applications, but also for auditors and anyone curious about how this chain works.”
Robert Reith, CEO of Accretion
“This is great, might start using the chain.”
Alessandro Decina, Anza
About the author
Mike MacCana creates Solana and finance content at Quicknode, where he maintains the most comprehensive open library of tested Solana programs: the companion repository this book is built on. Before Quicknode, he ran developer education at the Solana Foundation, where he created a four-day education program taught at Ivy League universities, and co-created the Solana Foundation Developer Bootcamp, watched over 330,000 times on YouTube. Before the Foundation, he won the RWA and Messaging prizes at the Solana Sandstorm hackathon for Portal Payments.
Before Solana, Mike worked at large financial firms including Man Group, Credit Suisse, and CMC Invest, and at Google and Red Hat. He lives in New York City and is on X as @mikemaccana.
A note from the author
“‘Building Financial Software on Solana’ is the book I wish had existed when I started building onchain. Until now, people had to dig through other teams’ repositories and work out the patterns for themselves. Books, guides and training courses focused on how the chain works, because they didn’t want to get into the complexity of real financial software. This book draws on decades of teaching and writing to show clearly how real financial products work onchain, using real assets people care about and diagrams that show how state changes at every step.”
Mike MacCana, Quicknode
How to get the book
Read it free online: solanabook.org
Paperback: Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Updates and errata: @QuicknodeSolana on X
ISBN: 9798997472207
About Quicknode
Founded in 2017, Quicknode deploys institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure for developers and enterprises. With 99.99% uptime and support for 76+ chains, teams build and scale onchain applications without compromise.
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