Upgradeability Patterns Overview — Forge College

Why does upgradeability work so differently between Solidity and Solana, and how do you map familiar proxy patterns into Anchor and Rust? Understanding these conceptual equivalents is essential before you start migrating contracts or designing on-chain upgrade strategies. What you'll learn In this lesson you will map the primary upgradeability strategies from Solidity to their conceptual counterparts on Solana and in Anchor. You'll get a clear explanation of delegate-proxy patterns, implementation pointers (EIP-1967/EIP-1822 styles), and unstructured storage alternatives, then see how those ideas translate when code and state live in separate programs and accounts. We cover constructor-to-initializer translation, storage layout compatibility for account data, program-derived addresses and account rekeying as proxy-like indirection, and how upgrade choices affect compute and rent costs. Practical tradeoffs are emphasized so you can choose a migration path that balances safety, performance, and future extensibility. Who this is for This lesson is targeted at intermediate developers who know Solidity and basic EVM proxy concepts and who are beginning to build on Solana using Rust and Anchor. Familiarity with account models and basic Anchor programs is recommended. Key topics covered - Delegate-proxy and implementation-pointer patterns (EIP-1967/EIP-1822) and their conceptual analogs on Solana - Storage layout compatibility: mapping Solidity storage slots to Anchor account structs - Constructor vs initializer semantics and safe initialization patterns in Anchor - State separation vs in-program logic updates: tradeoffs for performance and upgradeability - Program-derived addresses, account rekeying, and emulating indirection on Solana - How upgrade strategies affect compute, account writes, and rent costs Ready to build safer, more maintainable upgrades across chains? Learn more and continue your studies at https://www.forge.college/