Wrap SOL into wSOL, or unwrap it back to native SOL

SOL is Solana's native currency. It lives directly in the lamport balance of an account and is moved by the System Program. Every other asset on Solana is an SPL token, held in token accounts and moved by the Token program. Programs that handle tokens — exchanges, lending markets, liquidity pools — are written against the token interface, and native SOL does not fit it. Wrapped SOL is the bridge: an SPL token that represents SOL one for one.

wSOL has a fixed mint address, So11111111111111111111111111111111111111112, known as the native mint. It is not issued by a company and there is no custodian or peg to trust. A wSOL token account is simply a token account whose lamports are counted as its token balance, so every wSOL is backed, lamport for lamport, by SOL sitting in that same account. Wrapping and unwrapping are therefore always exactly 1:1, with no price, spread or slippage.

Wrapping is three instructions in one transaction. First, your wallet's associated token account for the native mint is created if it does not exist yet. Second, a System Program transfer moves the SOL you chose into that account. Third, the Token program's SyncNative instruction tells the account to recompute its token balance from its lamports, and the transferred SOL appears as wSOL.

Creating the token account requires a rent-exempt deposit of 1,488,440 lamports, about 0.0015 SOL, which is why the panel shows a one-time rent line the first time you wrap. It is a deposit rather than a cost: it comes back when the account is closed. If you already have a wSOL account, wrapping just tops it up and only the network fee applies. The Max button leaves enough SOL in your wallet for the fee and, where needed, this deposit.

Unwrapping is a single CloseAccount instruction on your wSOL token account. For ordinary tokens an account must be empty before it can be closed, but native mint accounts are the exception: closing one sends all of its lamports to the destination — your wallet — which returns both the wrapped balance and the rent deposit as native SOL in one step.

Because unwrapping closes the account, it is all or nothing; the Token program has no instruction for partially unwrapping. If you want to keep some wSOL, unwrap everything and wrap the amount you need again, which costs two network fees and nothing else. The operation is fully reversible in both directions, as many times as you like, and each direction is one signature.

Most people never wrap SOL on purpose. Swap aggregators and DeFi apps wrap it automatically at the start of a transaction and unwrap it at the end. When a transaction fails half-way through a multi-step flow, when an app is closed between steps, or when a limit order or liquidity position pays out in wSOL, the leftover balance stays in a token account labelled Wrapped SOL. Wallets show it as a separate token, and it cannot pay transaction fees.

Unwrapping with this tool turns it back into spendable SOL and recovers the rent deposit at the same time. If the account shows zero wSOL it is still worth closing, because the deposit is locked in it either way. For empty accounts of other tokens, the SOLTidy token account closer does the same thing in bulk across your whole wallet.