Thread by @pencilflip

If you're writing Solana instructions involving tokens/NFTs, please require the token's mint account to be passed!

Otherwise, if you query for the mint's transactions, transactions that include your instruction may not show up... more on this 👇

For example—the regular "Transfer" instruction of the SPL Token Program does not take in the mint account.

Thus, if you transfer an NFT using this instruction, it WON'T show up on that NFT's Solana Explorer page.

That's why @phantom uses the "Transfer Checked" instruction, which does take in the mint account.

And that's why NFT transfers conducted via Phantom will always show up in Solana Explorer for the token mint account.

For example, this transaction

explorer.solana.com/tx/5V59Lsj8vJ8…

shows up for this token mint

explorer.solana.com/address/CbcNE5…

Note: this is why @MagicEden_NFT transactions aren't listed in Solana Explorer.

For example, the instruction they use to list NFTs on the marketplace doesn't take in the mint account.

And thus, listing transactions don't show up in Solana Explorer on the mint account's page.

Why does this matter?

Well, say someone wanted to build a nice UI showing all of an NFT's transactions.

The most straightforward way to do this is to use connection.getConfirmedSignaturesForAddress2(mint), parse the transactions, and display them.

But if an instruction doesn't take in the mint account... transactions including the instruction may not show up when you call getConfirmedSignaturesForAddress2!

And that makes it harder for developers to build cool stuff.