nft-meta

A Rust CLI that reads on-chain NFT metadata from the Metaplex Token Metadata program on Solana.

This tool is a read-only inspector. It does not mint, update, or manage NFTs. The NFTs it reads are created and owned by third parties through the Metaplex standard — nft-meta simply decodes and displays their on-chain metadata.

Install

cargo install --path .

Usage

The CLI targets Solana Mainnet by default — no extra flag needed.

From a mint address

cargo run -- mint <ADDRESS>

From a transaction signature

cargo run -- tx <SIGNATURE>

The CLI will scan all accounts in the transaction, auto-detect the NFT mint, and print its full metadata.

Choosing a cluster

Use --cluster (or -c) to select a Solana network:

Value	RPC endpoint
mainnet (default)	https://api.mainnet-beta.solana.com
testnet	https://api.testnet.solana.com
devnet	https://api.devnet.solana.com
localhost	http://localhost:8899
Any URL	Used as-is

# Devnet
cargo run -- -c devnet mint <ADDRESS>

# Custom RPC
cargo run -- -c https://your-rpc-endpoint.com mint <ADDRESS>

⚠️ Note the -- separator between cargo run and your CLI arguments. Everything after -- is passed to your program, not to Cargo.

Getting help

cargo run -- --help          # general help
cargo run -- mint --help     # mint subcommand help
cargo run -- tx --help       # tx subcommand help

Output example

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 On-chain Metadata
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Mint:                  DtRy2fCC7GGir4TMMEcTowA4FgMqgu74BXrjnU8MGMb7
  Name:                  Lot 11 ...
  Symbol:                S
  URI:                   https://soulboundimages.s3.eu-west-3.amazonaws.com/a/mmq8nk3smq26om.j
  Update Authority:      HdknM9vFE15udMbju6CqisFthkN6yZE7kZvCc1...
  Seller Fee:            0 bps  (0%)
  Primary Sale:          false
  Is Mutable:            true
  Edition Nonce:         252
  Token Standard:        ProgrammableNonFungible

 Collection
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  None

 Uses
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  None

 Creators
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Creator #1
    Address:       HdknM9vFE15udMbju6CqisFthkN6yZE7kZvCc1...
    Verified:      true
    Share:         100%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

How it works

• mint command — derives the Metaplex metadata PDA from the mint address, fetches the raw account data, and deserializes it via Borsh.
• tx command — fetches the transaction, walks every account key, checks if a Metaplex metadata PDA exists for it, and uses the first match as the mint.

The Borsh structs are defined manually to match the exact on-chain Metaplex layout, with no dependency on the Metaplex SDK.