Before this week, NFTs on Solana weren't new to me. I've previously worked with Programmable NFTs (pNFTs) and even built projects that integrate them. However, most of my experience was centered around the Metaplex ecosystem, so I tended to think about NFTs through that lens.
What surprised me during this learning arc was discovering how much can be built directly with Token Extensions. By creating NFTs from the token level upward, I gained a much deeper understanding of the underlying primitives that make digital assets work on Solana.
The Mental Model: What Is an NFT on Solana?
As developers, we often interact with NFTs through SDKs, frameworks, and marketplace tooling. Those abstractions are useful, but they can hide what's actually happening on-chain.
This week helped me simplify the model:
