Library note
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.
Read the mint before the amount
A Solana token account is an account owned by the SPL Token program. The wallet that pays fees is a separate account, and the mint that defines the token is a separate account. The token account holds a balance of one mint, for one owner. At the desk we write the mint public key on the first line, because a large amount of the wrong mint is still the wrong token.
Decimals live on the mint, not as a feeling about the amount. If the mint says six decimals, an amount of 1500000 is 1.5 of that token. We make the reader write the decimal count beside the amount so the two accounts stay tied together.
Owner, delegate, and state
The owner field is the address allowed to sign a transfer, a burn, or an approve. The delegate is optional. When it is set, the delegated amount caps what that second signature may move. Readers mix these up when a wallet they do not recognize appears on the account. Sometimes it is a delegate they approved months ago. Sometimes they are looking at a different token account entirely.
State is a small word with a hard consequence. Initialized means the account can move, subject to the other fields. Frozen means transfers stop until the mint's freeze authority thaws that account. Uninitialized means you are not looking at a live token account yet. We ask readers to say the state out loud before they talk about a failed transfer.
Close authority is its own field
Close authority, when set, is the signature that may close the token account after the token amount is zero. Closing returns the rent-exemption lamports to a destination the instruction names. It does not require the owner to be the same address, if a separate close authority was written at initialization or later.
On the notation sheet the last line is always close authority, even when the field is empty. An empty field means the owner holds that power. A filled field means someone else must sign. That single line has settled more arguments at our table than any lecture about wallets.