What’s the difference between mainnet, devnet, and testnet?

If you’ve gone around the settings menu, you probably have noticed the “Network” option.

Using this, you can switch between Solana mainnet, devnet, and testnet and will also be warned that devnet and testnet assets hold no real value. If you aren’t an advanced user or a developer there’s no need to switch out of the mainnet option, however, here’s an explanation for all three of them.

• Mainnet

Solana’s Mainnet serves as the realm where all the transactions on the Solana network are processed. It’s here where the distributed ledger keeps track of everyone’s token balances.

• Devnet

Devnet is where you can access all functions on the main net for testing and development purposes without actually interacting or risking real assets on the mainnet. Tokens on Devnet are not real assets and cannot be transferred over to mainnet in any way.

• Testnet

Testnet is similar to Devnet, but focuses on network performance and stability, it is oriented to be used by validators. Tokens on Testnet are not real assets and cannot be transferred over to mainnet in any way.

⚠️ Anyone who offers to send you tokens from Solana’s Devnet or Testnet in exchange for an asset you’d send on Mainnet is a bad actor.⚠️

If this has happened to you Solflare’s customer support may advise you on what actions to take, however, keep in mind that we are not able to retrieve any tokens sent.

If you’re a developer and wish to connect your app to Solflare, follow this guide:

https://docs.solflare.com/solflare/technical/integrate-solflare