Txtx

What Is Txtx?

Txtx is an open-source developer toolchain that brings infrastructure-as-code discipline to Web3 deployments and operations. Rather than relying on ad hoc bash scripts, one-off terminal commands, or copy-pasted private keys, Txtx lets engineering teams write Smart Contract Runbooks — declarative, version-controlled blueprints that codify every step of deploying, upgrading, and operating smart contracts and Solana programs. The project positions itself as the Web3 equivalent of HashiCorp Terraform for cloud infrastructure management.

The repository lives under the Solana Foundation GitHub organization (solana-foundation/txtx), is written primarily in Rust, and is licensed under Apache-2.0. As of mid-2025 it had logged 46 releases and the codebase is published as the txtx-core crate on crates.io.

The Problem Txtx Solves

Web3 deployments have historically carried two compounding risks. First, manual processes using raw CLI commands are brittle, non-reproducible, and undocumented — making incident recovery or protocol upgrades painful. Second, operations that require private keys are routinely handled by copy-pasting secrets across terminals, a practice the Txtx team estimates contributes to between $500 million and $1 billion in annual losses from compromised keys.

Txtx addresses both problems in a single framework: reproducibility via a declarative language and stateful runtime, and security by moving signing into browser-based interactive prompts backed by web wallets, hardware wallets, or multisig ceremonies.

Core Mechanism: Smart Contract Runbooks

A Txtx runbook is a file written in Txtx's declarative language — inspired by HashiCorp's HCL but tailored for blockchain contexts. Runbooks compose three types of primitives:

• Actions — individual on-chain or off-chain operations such as deploying a program buffer, upgrading a program authority, calling a contract function, or encoding an instruction from an IDL.
• Signers — declarations of how private key material will be provided at runtime: mnemonic phrases, raw secret keys, or browser-connected wallets. Signers are resolved interactively at execution time.
• Inputs/Outputs — typed values that flow between actions, enabling runbooks to chain operations and carry state.

The runtime maintains stateful execution: it tracks which actions have completed, so re-running a partially executed runbook picks up where it left off rather than replaying the entire sequence. Developers interact with runbooks through a CLI, and optionally through a local Web UI Supervisor that guides users through signing steps one at a time.

Solana and Multi-Chain Support

Txtx's SVM addon (currently in beta) supports Solana and SVM-compatible chains including Eclipse. It provides Anchor program deployment, instruction encoding from a program's IDL, transfer and program-call transactions, and deployment failure recovery.

Beyond Solana, Txtx runbooks are chain-agnostic: a single runbook can mix actions targeting different networks. EVM support (including deterministic deployments via CREATE2) is also in beta, and the Stacks blockchain addon reached RC1. An early mainnet runbook execution moved $2.5 million, demonstrating the tool operates at production scale.

Ecosystem Recognition

Txtx won first prize in the Crypto Infrastructure track of the Solana Radar Hackathon, receiving $30,000 in USDC. Radar was organized by Colosseum — the tenth Solana Foundation hackathon — and drew more than 10,000 participants across 1,359 final submissions. Surfpool, a subsequent project from the same team, is a local Solana testing environment that uses Txtx runbook infrastructure as its deployment backbone.

Team and Foundation

Txtx was co-founded and led by Ludo Galabru, who previously worked in the Stacks ecosystem. The team later joined the Solana Foundation, with the project's repository migrating into the solana-foundation GitHub organization. Additional team members involved in the transition include Micaiah Reid and Catherine Gu. The tool is currently in beta.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

Txtx fills a gap that other Solana tooling does not: the operational layer between writing a program and running it reliably in production. Anchor handles the framework and IDL layer; one-off scripts handle individual transactions; but neither provides an auditable, version-controlled, repeatable record of what was deployed and how it was authorized. Txtx fills that gap with the same rigor Terraform brought to cloud infrastructure — declare the desired state, execute idempotently, and collect signatures securely rather than through ad hoc key exposure.