Phantom wallet: Solana transactions debug

Question

I need to know which instuctions list is used for a transaction in order to use it in my application.

For example: There is an unknown NFT marketplace, I can buy NFT through the "Buy" button in the browser. I want to buy these nft programmatically, not through the browser. To do this, I need to know all the instructions and transactions.

And in general, can I buy NFTs if the marketplace does not use CandyMachine, MagicEden, etc.?

Answer 1

Each marketplace/platform has a different way of managing transactions.

If you are interested in how transactions are put together and want to start building an understanding of the ecosystem, you have two options:

1. pick an open source repo (on Metaplex on you have auction house / storefront / fixed price listing / candy machine at least ). Some of these will have template UIs as well that you can customise to suit your needs. They come with several examples of transactions so that you can learn to build them from ground up.

2. Pick a proprietary framework (like Magic Eden), and interact with them via their API. You will not be building the transactions yourself in this case. In the case of Magic Eden, they build the transaction instructions serverside and serve them over their instructions API. You will not know (nor would you necessarily need to know) how the transactions are put together, as they've handled the abstractions for you.

Some examples of different NFT frameworks in the solana space:

1. Metaplex Auction Manager (open source) + Storefront UI. Useful for learning about how transactions are created, but probably unwise to start building a long-term solution on top this. Also Storefront UI is in places quite complex but as long as you just focus on the transactions and how they are generated, it's a useful pedagogical tool.

2. Metaplex Auction House (open source) is intended as a replacement for Auction Manager framework. Like the Auction Manager, Auction House is open source and there are multiple examples of how to use it in metaplex repos.

3. Metaplex Fixed Price (open source) is another listing framework with its own set of contracts. Again repos are available on metaplex github.

4. Magic Eden (proprietary) expose their transactions via an API, which gives you serialized transaction. You can use the transactions generated by their API in your application, but because ME is not open source, you will not be able to generate the transactions from scratch.

The above are just examples. However, the one thing they all share is that they use Metaplex standard for expressing their mint metadata. The way ownership is expressed via TokenAccounts is also standard across all, which means that as long as you hold NFts in your wallet, you will be able to list them in any of the above.

In addition to the above, Metaplex discord is also a useful source of information with a friendly community, but please check the growing SO knowledge base first.