Salmon

What It Is and the Problem It Solves

Most Solana wallets are closed systems: proprietary code, opaque upgrade paths, and a single company deciding which protocols get featured integrations and which get left out. Salmon was built to challenge that model. It is an open-source, self-custodial wallet for Solana that treats community ownership not as a marketing tagline but as a structural design choice—releasing its codebase under GPL v3.0 so anyone can audit, fork, or extend it.

The project's central argument is that decentralized infrastructure should not sit behind a closed wallet. As Salmon's own framing puts it: "You can't be decentralized with closed source. And if you're not decentralized, why are you using a blockchain?" That framing shapes every architectural decision from how private keys are stored to how new features are added.

Origins

Salmon began as a fork of Sollet, the early Solana web wallet, before evolving into a complete ground-up rewrite. The project gained early validation at the Solana Riptide hackathon and subsequently received a Serum Foundation grant, giving it both ecosystem credibility and initial funding to develop beyond a hackathon prototype into a maintained, multi-platform product. Development has continued in public on GitHub, where the repository has accumulated more than 850 commits on its main branch.

How It Works

Salmon is a self-custodial wallet, meaning private keys are generated and stored exclusively on the user's device. No keys are transmitted to or held by Salmon's servers—the wallet connects to Solana's network directly from the client. Users can create a new wallet (generating a seed phrase locally) or import an existing one.

The codebase is built with React 18 on web and React Native for mobile, sharing core logic across platforms while adapting the interface to each environment. The browser extension layer (available for Chrome, Brave, and Firefox) enables dApp connections using the standard Solana wallet adapter interface, so any Solana application already supporting Phantom or Solflare will work with Salmon without additional integration work.

Powerups: Modular Feature Architecture

The most distinctive design choice in Salmon is what the team calls "Powerups"—a modular add-on system that lets functionality be layered on top of a minimal, reliable core rather than baked in from the start. The philosophy is to get onboarding right first, establish "one reliable experience," and then expand.

The base wallet handles send, receive, balance viewing, and NFT display. On top of that, Powerups include:

• Swap — in-wallet token swaps
• Bridge — cross-chain transfers, with integration via StealthEX for the in-wallet bridge
• Explore — discovery of ecosystem applications and protocols
• Portfolio — consolidated asset tracking
• On/Off Ramp — fiat entry and exit (community-developed Powerup)
• News — ecosystem news aggregation (community-developed Powerup)

The Powerups model matters for the open-source thesis: it gives community contributors a clear extension point rather than requiring changes to core wallet code, which lowers the barrier to contribution and reduces the risk of bugs in critical path code.

Supported Assets and Chains

Salmon supports Solana-native assets as its primary use case—SOL, SPL tokens (including USDC, JUP, BONK, and the broader long-tail of Solana tokens), and Solana NFTs. The wallet also integrates with the Solana Name Service, allowing users to send to .sol domain names rather than base-58 addresses.

Beyond Solana, Salmon has extended to Bitcoin through a multi-chain unified accounts feature, its largest cross-chain step. The bridge Powerup (via StealthEX) enables asset movement between chains within the wallet interface.

Solana Pay

Salmon operates a dedicated Solana Pay integration at solanapay.salmonwallet.io, enabling payments via the Solana Pay standard. This makes Salmon relevant not just as a personal asset wallet but as a payment recipient tool for merchants and creators accepting SOL-denominated payments.

Validator Participation

Salmon also runs a Solana validator node, aligning with the project's broader ethos of active ecosystem participation rather than passive infrastructure consumption. This contributes to network decentralization and demonstrates a commitment to Solana's proof-of-stake consensus.

Security Model

The security posture rests on three pillars: self-custody (keys never leave the device), open-source transparency (anyone can audit the full codebase under GPL v3.0), and platform-native key storage practices. The project does not document a formal third-party security audit in its public repository, and users relying on Salmon for significant holdings should weigh that accordingly. The team requests that security vulnerabilities be disclosed directly rather than filed as public issues.

How It Fits Solana

Solana's wallet ecosystem has historically been dominated by a small number of well-funded proprietary wallets. Salmon occupies a distinct position as the ecosystem's primary open-source, community-governed alternative—comparable in principle to what MetaMask represented in Ethereum's early days before that project scaled into a large organization. The GPL v3.0 license, the Powerups extension model, and the built-in public development style are all designed to keep Salmon legible and forkable regardless of what happens to the team behind it.

For protocols that want wallet integration without depending on the goodwill of a gatekeeper, Salmon's open architecture represents a meaningful distribution alternative. For end users who want to verify what their wallet software is actually doing, the open-source codebase provides an accountability mechanism that closed-source alternatives cannot match.

The project is available across web (app.salmonwallet.io), Chrome/Brave/Firefox extension, and iOS and Android mobile apps, with active development continuing under the @salmonwallet handle on X.