Comparison & Optimization: Automation vs Manual, Fees & Strategies

Rent recovery can be performed in several ways. Method choice depends on technical skills, number of accounts, and value of your time.

Scenario 1: Manual Closing via CLI

When suitable:

• You have 1-5 empty accounts
• You're a developer with terminal experience
• You fundamentally want to avoid service fees

Requirements:

Technical skills: Installing Rust and Solana CLI, understanding command line, working with keypair files

Environment setup time: 30-60 minutes (first time)

Process for closing one account:

# Step 1: View account list solana-keygen pubkey ~/.config/solana/id.json spl-token accounts # Step 2: Close specific account spl-token close --address # Step 3: Confirm transaction

Time per account: ~2-3 minutes (finding address + executing command)

Cost:

• Gas: ~0.000005 SOL per account
• Service fee: 0 SOL
• Your time: 2-3 minutes × number of accounts

Efficiency calculation:

If you have 50 accounts:

• Work time: 100-150 minutes (2.5 hours)
• Fee savings: ~0.1 SOL (20% of 0.5 SOL recovery)
• Time value: If your hour costs $20+, method is unprofitable

Risks:

• Typo in address = loss of funds
• Accidentally closing important account
• Command errors = wasted gas without result

Scenario 2: Automated Cleanup Service

When suitable:

• You have 20+ empty accounts
• You're not a developer or value time
• Want guaranteed result without risks

Process:

• Paste address in scanner (30 seconds)
• Review results (1 minute)
• Connect wallet and confirm (1 minute)
• Wait for execution (5-10 seconds)

Total time: 3-5 minutes regardless of account number.

Cost:

• Gas: ~0.00001 SOL per batch of 20 accounts
• Service fee: 10-25% of recovery
• Your time: 5 minutes total

Efficiency calculation:

If you have 50 accounts:

• Work time: 5 minutes
• Recovery: ~0.5 SOL (at 0.01 SOL per account)
• Fee: ~0.1 SOL
• Net profit: 0.4 SOL for 5 minutes work

Advantages:

• Batch processing (20-25 accounts per transaction)
• Automatic filtering of dangerous accounts
• Result preview before wallet connection
• No input error risk

Scenario 3: Hybrid Approach

Optimal strategy for experienced users:

Stage 1: Use automated service for mass closing of simple SPL tokens (90% of work) and obtaining list of complex cases

Stage 2: Use CLI for PDA accounts service didn't process, Token-2022 with non-standard extensions, and fine-tuning (e.g., choosing specific rent recipient)

Result: Time savings + maximum process control.

Wallet interaction architecture determines the level of protection from phishing and user errors.

Connect-First: Outdated Model

Typical flow:

Open site → "Connect Wallet" button → Connect wallet → See data → Make decision → Sign transaction

Why this is problematic:

Decision-making moment: You connected wallet BEFORE seeing how much can be recovered. Psychologically harder to refuse operation after connection.

Information asymmetry: Site knows your address, sees all your funds, but you don't yet know what it will do.

Risk for beginners: Inexperienced users get used to "connecting everywhere" and become victims of phishing sites.

Impossible verification without risk: Cannot check someone else's wallet (friend's, cold wallet) without physical access.

Where still used: Old DeFi protocols (2020-2021), simple token burners without scanning, scam sites (deliberately use this pattern to create legitimacy illusion)

Verify-First: Modern Standard

Typical flow:

Open site → Enter address (public) → See detailed report → Make decision → "Claim" button → Connect wallet → Sign transaction

Advantages:

Informed consent: You see exact recovery amount, fee, account list before wallet connection.

Public data: Service uses only public key (address) for scanning. This is public information available via block explorer.

Safe verification: Can scan multiple own wallets simultaneously, cold wallets (Ledger) without connection, friends' wallets for help, and compromised wallets to assess remainders.

No pressure: If result not impressive (e.g., 0.01 SOL recovery), can simply close tab without site interaction.

Phishing protection: Phishing sites cannot use this pattern as they need wallet access for theft. Verify-First automatically filters 90% of scams.

Technical Implementation of Verify-First

Backend architecture uses two independent calls:

Step 1: Public scanning (no authorization) - RPC requests use only public methods

Step 2: Signing (only during claim) - now requires signed transaction

Key point: First call requires no authorization, making it completely safe for users to verify before commitment.

This is a fundamental difference in blockchain architectures, related to design priorities.

The State Bloat Problem

What is State: All data that must be accessible for transaction validation - account balances, smart contract code, contract variables, token metadata.

Why it's a problem: Each validator must store ALL state in fast access for transaction verification. With growing usage, State grows exponentially.

Ethereum's Approach: Hidden Cost

How it works:

• You pay huge transaction fees ($5-50 for regular transfer, $50-200 for complex operations)
• Part of this money compensates validators for eternal data storage costs
• Data stored FOREVER without deletion possibility

Problems:

Uncontrolled State growth: Ethereum State grew from 10 GB (2017) to 900+ GB (2024). Hardware requirements growing.

Dead data: Millions of contracts and accounts unused for years but occupy space. No cleanup mechanism.

Gas Wars: During congestion, fees skyrocket to $500+ per transaction as users compete for block space.

Centralization: Only large companies can afford running full node (2-4 TB SSD + powerful hardware).

Solana's Approach: Explicit Cost + Refundable Deposit

How it works:

• Transactions cheap ($0.0002-0.005)
• Separate deposit for data storage (rent)
• Deposit returned when data deleted

Advantages:

Controlled State growth: Users incentivized to clean junk as they can return money. State grows slower.

Honest pricing: Don't pay for "eternal storage" if using data temporarily. Closed account = returned deposit.

Low transaction fees: Validators don't compensate storage through gas, so gas remains cheap.

Decentralization: Hardware requirements grow slower, more independent validators can participate.

Disadvantages:

User complexity: Need to understand rent concept and actively manage accounts.

Locked capital: Part of SOL "frozen" in empty accounts for uninformed users.

Alternative Approaches in Other Blockchains

Near Protocol: Uses "storage staking" - stake NEAR for storage (1 NEAR = 10 KB), unstake returns NEAR but deletes data

Cosmos/IBC chains: Each network chooses own model

Sui/Aptos: "Storage rebates" - hybrid where you pay for storage on creation, get partial refund on deletion (~70-80%, not 100%)

The Future: EIP-4444 in Ethereum

Ethereum discussing introducing "history expiry" - data older than 1 year removed from mandatory validator storage, access to history through archive nodes (optional). This is a step toward Solana's model but without refunds to users.

Priority Fee is a mechanism allowing transaction processing acceleration during network congestion.

How Priority Fee Works

Fee structure:

Total Fee = Base Fee + Priority Fee Base Fee = 5000 lamports (fixed) Priority Fee = Compute Units × Price per CU (you set)

Operating principle: Validators sort transactions in mempool by Priority Fee. High payment = high priority.

When Priority Fee Needed

Normal time (low activity): Priority Fee = 0 sufficient. Transaction passes in 1-2 seconds.

Medium activity: Priority Fee = 10,000-50,000 lamports (~$0.0001-0.0005) recommended for guarantee.

High load (popular NFT mint, viral memecoin): Priority Fee can reach 0.01-0.1 SOL ($1-10) for guaranteed block inclusion.

Optimization Strategies

Strategy 1: Dynamic Priority Fee

Modern wallets offer slider: Low (0) / Medium (0.0001 SOL) / High (0.001 SOL)

How to choose:

• Low: If not hurrying (rent return can wait 5 minutes)
• Medium: Standard for most cases
• High: Only for critical necessity (evacuation from hacked wallet)

Strategy 2: Real-time Network Monitoring

Use services like Solana Beach or QuickNode to check current average Priority Fee and network congestion. Set fee slightly above average for guarantee.

Strategy 3: Operation Batching

Instead of sending 3 separate transactions, send maximum batches to reduce total fee cost while accomplishing same work.

Strategy 4: Timing Selection

Solana has daily activity cycles:

Low load: 02:00-08:00 UTC (night in USA), weekends

High load: 14:00-22:00 UTC (day in USA and Europe), popular project launch days

If not urgent, do cleanup at night or weekends with minimal Priority Fee.

Compute Units Optimization

Advanced technique: By default transactions request maximum Compute Units (1.4M) but actually use less. Optimize by setting lower limit to reduce Priority Fee calculation base, saving up to 71% on fees.

Important: If actual usage exceeds specified limit, transaction fails. Use with caution.

If you manage 10+ wallets (trading, arbitrage, business), you need a mass cleanup strategy.

Manual Approach Problems

Time costs: 10 wallets × 5 minutes = 50 minutes work

Context switching: Constantly connecting/disconnecting different wallets in browser

Error risk: Easy to confuse which wallet already cleaned and which not

Solution 1: Batch Scanning

Modern cleanup tools allow:

Paste address list and get summary report showing total wallets, empty accounts, recoverable amount, and estimated time.

Sequential connection: Claim for wallet 1 → Disconnect, Claim for wallet 2 → Disconnect, etc.

Optimization: Use different browser tabs for parallel work.

Solution 2: Programmatic Automation

For developers: Use Solana Web3.js to create script that loops through wallets, gets empty accounts, builds close transactions, signs and sends them automatically.

Advantages: Fully automated, can run weekly via cron, results logging

Risks: Need to store private keys in script (use encrypted storage), code error can lead to fund loss

Solution 3: Centralization via Sub-wallets

Architecture:

Main Wallet (cold storage) ├── Trading Wallet 1 ├── Trading Wallet 2 ├── Trading Wallet 3 └── Bot Wallets 1-10

Strategy: Regularly cleanup all sub-wallets, transfer recovered SOL to Main Wallet, use Main Wallet only for storage not activity

Advantage: If sub-wallet compromised, main funds safe.