Program Development

Overview of on-chain program development using Anchor, Pinocchio, or native Rust SDKs.

Rust Crates

ZK Compression’s Rust crates are published to crates.io and can be found on docs.rs with the light- prefix.

• light-sdk — For Anchor and native programs. Includes CPI utilities, compressed account abstractions similar to anchor Account, and metadata structs for CPIs to the Light System program.
• light-sdk-pinocchio — For Pinocchio programs. Pinocchio-optimized SDK with compressed account abstractions and CPI utilities.

Light Programs Overview

Your custom program invokes the Light system program via Cross-Program Invocation (CPI) to leverage ZK Compression.

Program	Description
light-system-program	Enforces compressed account layout, ownership checks, and validity proof verification. Used to create/write compressed accounts and PDAs.
light-compressed-token	SPL-compatible compressed token implementation with arbitrary compression/decompression support.
account-compression	State and address tree implementation used by the Light System program. Clients and custom programs do not interact with the Account Compression Program — this is handled under the hood.

Version Requirements

Required versions:

• Rust: 1.86.0 or later
• Solana CLI: 2.2.15
• Anchor CLI: 0.31.1
• Zk compression CLI: 0.27.0 or later
• Node.js: 23.5.0 or later

Installation

Install Solana CLI:

sh -c "$(curl -sSfL https://release.solana.com/v2.2.15/install)"

Install Anchor CLI:

cargo install --git https://github.com/coral-xyz/anchor avm --force
avm install latest
avm use latest

Install the Light CLI:

npm

npm install -g @lightprotocol/zk-compression-cli@alpha

yarn

yarn global add @lightprotocol/zk-compression-cli@alpha

pnpm

pnpm add -g @lightprotocol/zk-compression-cli@alpha

Verify installation:

light --version

Next Steps

Build your own program or view program examples.

Program Guides

Program Examples