Pinocchio Development Guide

Build blazing-fast Solana programs with Pinocchio - a zero-dependency, zero-copy framework that delivers 88-95% compute unit reduction and 40% smaller binaries compared to traditional approaches.

Overview

Pinocchio is Anza's minimalist Rust library for writing Solana programs without the heavyweight solana-program crate. It treats incoming transaction data as a single byte slice, reading it in-place via zero-copy techniques.

Performance Comparison

| Metric | Anchor | Native (solana-program) | Pinocchio |
|--------|--------|------------------------|-----------|
| Token Transfer CU | ~6,000 | ~4,500 | ~600-800 |
| Binary Size | Large | Medium | Small (-40%) |
| Heap Allocation | Required | Required | Optional |
| Dependencies | Many | Several | Zero* |

*Only Solana SDK types for on-chain execution

When to Use Pinocchio

Use Pinocchio When:

Building high-throughput programs (DEXs, orderbooks, games)

Compute units are a bottleneck

Binary size matters (program deployment costs)

You need maximum control over memory

Building infrastructure (tokens, vaults, escrows)

Consider Anchor Instead When:

Rapid prototyping / MVPs

Team unfamiliar with low-level Rust

Complex account relationships

Need extensive ecosystem tooling

Audit timeline is tight (more auditors know Anchor)

Quick Start

1. Project Setup

# Cargo.toml
[package]
name = "my-program"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2021"
[lib]
crate-type = ["cdylib", "lib"]
[features]
default = []
bpf-entrypoint = []
[dependencies]
pinocchio = "0.10"
pinocchio-system = "0.4"      # System Program CPI helpers
pinocchio-token = "0.4"       # Token Program CPI helpers
bytemuck = { version = "1.14", features = ["derive"] }
[profile.release]
overflow-checks = true
lto = "fat"
codegen-units = 1
opt-level = 3

2. Basic Program Structure

```rust
use pinocchio::{
account_info::AccountInfo,
entrypoint,
program_error::Pro