Mint authority and freeze authority, read in that order
The mint account tells you who may create more of a token and who may freeze a holder's token account. Those two authorities are not the owner of your balance.
Library notes
Field notes from the Geumsan desk and the Saturday table.
These are the readings we repeat often enough to write down: token account fields, associated addresses, rent lamports, and the two authorities on a mint.
Rent-exemption lamports and closing an empty token account
An empty token balance still sits in an account that holds lamports. Those lamports paid for rent exemption. Closing is how they come back.
How an associated token account address is derived
People send tokens to a wallet address and then wait. The SPL Token program expects a token account. The associated address is the usual way to find it.
The fields inside a Solana token account
Readers who arrive at Insam-ro often know the amount and skip the mint. The amount is one field. The account is a row of them.