How to create a Solana Token (SPL) from CLI with metadata

I wanted to create an SPL token and after looking online I couldn’t find an updated guide. I mainly just found Keyglowmax (SCAM). So I thought I would learn and share. There are much easier ways to create these tokens but they cost $ and spending more $ than needed is no fun. They also have you connect your wallet which is enough of a worry. This guide costs as little SOL as possible as everything is transacted directly on-chain. Everything is done from the CLI.

This guide just covers the basics, the tools used are way more powerful than what I use them for, this is just creating a basic token with no taxes or locked supply or anything complex, but these tools do support those options. If you are interested in doing more I would read the proper documentation.

NetworkChuck has a video from late 2021 on doing this, but some commands are a bit outdated, and Solana updated their entire metadata process in 2022.

I am using an Ubuntu 22.04 VM with 60GB storage to run these commands.

Starting balance: 0.079975 SOL
Ending balance: 0.05731652 SOL
Total SOL cost: 0.02265848 SOL ($4.22 on 3/15/2024)

Installing Solana Tools

First we need to download Solana tools to our system:

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

then run the export path command that is given to you:

export PATH="/home/mafyuh/.local/share/solana/install/active_release/bin:$PATH"

Restart your terminal session.

Creating Wallet

We will create a new SOL wallet to fund our token. To do this run:

solana-keygen new

You don’t have to put a passphrase if you don’t want to. I would backup your recovery seed phrase and take note of the public address. I would fund this wallet with some SOL as well at this time.

Keep note of the keypair directory for later step.

Check your SOL balance with:

solana balance

Install Rust

We need Rust in order to create the token, to install Rust run:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Press enter for default installation. Once completed, restart your session again.

Then we need to install some needed packages:

sudo apt install libudev-dev llvm libclang-dev libssl-dev pkg-config build-essential protobuf-compiler -y

Install spl-token-cli

Now using Rust we are gonna install Solana’s CLI tools, this will take a few minutes.

cargo install spl-token-cli

Create Token

Creating a new token is simple, make sure your wallet is funded with SOL and just run:

spl-token create-token

Your token’s address will be printed on screen. You will use this address in pretty much all the rest of the steps so keep handy.

Note this creates a 9 decimal token, with no extensions, if you want to change this and add complexity to the token check out this

If you want to create a token with different that 9 decimals use:

spl-token create-token --decimals <# of decimals>

For a list of all things you can do run:

spl-token create-token --help

Now we need to create a token account for this token:

spl-token create-account <TOKEN_ADDRESS>

Example:

spl-token create-account 7njsg9BA1xvXX9DNpe5fERHK4zb7MbCHKZ6zsx5k3adr

If you get errors like:

“unable to confirm transaction. This can happen in situations such as transaction expiration and insufficient fee-payer funds”

You just need to retry a few times, it will eventually go thru but sometimes takes 3-4 runs.

Minting Tokens

Now that you have a token and an account for the token, you can actually mint some tokens. To do this run:

spl-token mint <TOKEN_ADDRESS> <# of tokens> <ACCOUNT_ADDRESS>

Example:

spl-token mint 7njsg9BA1xvXX9DNpe5fERHK4zb7MbCHKZ6zsx5k3adr 1000000 CkaGbdriXVMHtzFBPtnpDjQvZ9gM9bwd8XdTTKR2Wx32

To see your tokens you can run:

spl-token accounts

Now you will want to send these tokens to a new address, so make a new wallet and get its pubkey, then to send these tokens run:

spl-token transfer --fund-recipient --allow-unfunded-recipient <TOKEN_ADDRESS> <# of tokens> <NEW_ADDRESS>

Example:

spl-token transfer --fund-recipient --allow-unfunded-recipient 7njsg9BA1xvXX9DNpe5fERHK4zb7MbCHKZ6zsx5k3adr 1000000 2DDyEt5N4y77ETWhhUmkZiympQbpjkfrt8FcMKhB1iWU

Installing Metaboss

Once this completes you can install metaboss which is needed to upload metadata. You can try to use spl-token built in metadata uploader as well, using –enable-metadata and initialize-metadata during token creation, but I couldn’t get this to work. Metaboss worked 1st try, again, this takes some time:

cargo install metaboss

Arweave/Github

While we wait on metaboss to install, we should start uploading our tokens Logo to a cloud provider, I use Arweave in this example but you can use anything really. There are also many ways to upload to arweave so this is just a friendly example thats free.

First create an account at https://akord.com/use-arweave Upload your image to a new vault. (PNG) Click on the information icon next to your image and copy the arweave.net URL. (Not under Share) We need this for our JSON file we will create next.

Now you can create a json file, and in it paste the following:

{
  "name": "TOKEN_NAME",
  "symbol": "SYM",
  "description": "Description of token",
  "image": "https://arweave.net/image-url-from-above"
}

If you want metadata extensions use:

{
  "name": "TOKEN_NAME",
  "symbol": "SYM",
  "description": "Small description of your token.",
  "image": "https://arweave.net/image-url-from-above",
  "extensions": {
    "website": "",
    "twitter": "",
    "telegram": ""
  }
}

Now save this file with .json extension and upload it to Arweave just like the image. Now we need this JSON file’s Arweave link. Copy it from akord and create a new json file in your Solana server’s working directory. Fill in the following:

{
  "name": "TOKEN_NAME",
  "symbol": "SYM",
  "uri": "https://arweave.net/json-file-arweave-url"
}

Using the JSON file’s Arweave link as the URI. Name this file metadata.json.

If you are using Github, just make a new repo, upload the json file and image, copy the RAW url. URL should look like https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xxxxxxx. Probably easier to use Github tbh, especially if you don’t even know what Arweave is.

Creating Metadata

First we need to update our RPC URL, to set to mainnet run:

solana config set --url https://api.mainnet-beta.solana.com  --keypair /home/mafyuh/.config/solana/id.json

Filling in your keypair directory from earlier.

Now that metaboss is installed, we just need to run 1 command to create our tokens metadata, again it may take a few tries:

metaboss create metadata -a <TOKEN_ADDRESS> -m metadata.json

You should be able to go to solscan and see your updated metadata! It should appear in the SOL wallets soon after.

Updating Metadata

If you ever need to update your metadata, you can do so by running:

metaboss update uri --keypair /home/mafyuh/.config/solana/id.json --account <TOKEN_ADDRESS> --new-uri https://arweave.net/new-arweave-json-url

or you can just edit your existing json file.

BONUS Creating a Market

Now that you have a coin ready to go, you probably wanna get it listed so others can buy, I’ll try to make this process as cheap and easy as possible. Thanks to this Reddit post for finding these values.

You need to connect your wallet and have the tokens in the wallet that is connected for this to work, so either restore your private key or send tokens to your wallet on PC.

Note I would not create this small of a market for a production coin, as what you are paying for when creating a market is essentially space on the blockchain for all your transactions. Long term projects should certainly not pay this little for a market, probably only good for smaller meme coins. If you are planning a long-term project you should probably be paying a few SOL for your market fee.

Raydium has some good docs on how to create a market and pool, I would review these docs as well.

First go to https://openbook-explorer.xyz/market/create
Click Existing under mints

Base Mint: Your token address
Quote Mint: So11111111111111111111111111111111111111112 (this is swapping for SOL)

Under Mints , since by default our token was 9 decimals, we will set these values

Min Order size: 0.1
Price Tick: 0.99999998 or 0.99999999

Under advanced options check use advanced options. (this is what we are paying for, if long-term pay the 2.78 SOL)

Event Queue Length: 128
Request Queue Length: 63
Orderbook Length: 201

At this time the cost to create this market is 0.32 SOL. Keep note of the market address.

BONUS Creating Pool

Now that we have a market, we need to create a pool. I’ve found Raydium to be the cheapest fee, but I would not cheap out on how much SOL you delegate to the pool as this is gonna be your liquidity, and having almost no liquidity is gonna be big red flag. But I have in the past just delegated .1 SOL and it worked, but trust me this is not gonna work out well.

First go to https://raydium.io/liquidity/create/

Connect Wallet
Paste Market ID

Under Price and initial liquidity

What we are doing here is setting our tokens starting price, the amount of tokens you put in the pool at the start decides how much they’re worth compared to SOL. All your tokenomics and things like this should probably already be done at this point, unless you’re just YOLO’ing it like I did. This is by far the most costly part of the process.
Set a certain start time if you want.

Hit Initialize Liquidity Pool and confirm in your wallet.

The total fee currently is .68 SOL to create this pool.

You will recieve all the LP tokens in your wallet.

Burning LP/ Revoke Authority

You will probably want to burn these LP tokens so buyers won’t be scared off. There are many ways to do this, you can use the cli using this command:

spl-token burn <TOKEN-ACCOUNT-ADDRESS> <AMOUNT>

You can get the address on Solscan. Some wallets like solflare allow you to burn tokens thru the wallet. Or you can use online services like https://sol-incinerator.com/

You will also want to revoke mint authority as well as freeze authority by running:

spl-token authorize <token_address> freeze --disable

And for mint authority:

spl-token authorize <token_address> mint --disable

If you want to get your price to show on the wallets, you need to get listed on CoinGecko. There’s a bunch of requirements, to apply here is a link.

To get listed on Jupiter, they will automatically list your token once it hits some benchmarks which can be found here

Now you just need to start your social media campaigns and best of luck! You can send your boy some of your tokens as thanks @ 3RYPrKxC6BNv3XUMf8Cyjg36pw6Qu1txRvqq6LNq9Psj

Total in Fees: 1 SOL (plus your liquidity)

Hope this guide has helped you save some $ when creating your Solana tokens!

Installing Solana Tools#

Creating Wallet#

Install Rust#

Install spl-token-cli#

Create Token#

Minting Tokens#

Installing Metaboss#

Arweave/Github#

Creating Metadata#

Updating Metadata#

BONUS Creating a Market#

BONUS Creating Pool#

Burning LP/ Revoke Authority#

Installing Solana Tools

Creating Wallet

Install Rust

Install spl-token-cli

Create Token

Minting Tokens

Installing Metaboss

Arweave/Github

Creating Metadata

Updating Metadata

BONUS Creating a Market

BONUS Creating Pool

Burning LP/ Revoke Authority