Cross-program invocation with unauthorized signer or writable account

Question

Facing verification failed issue and found many similar issues on StackExchange but couldn't solve my problem so posting here.

I have deployed a staking program on devnet. It initiates spl_token transfer from user's token account to its own token account.

After connecting wallet, when frontend react app calls the rust program for staking spl tokens, I get signature verification error:

{"code":-32003,"message":"failed to send transaction: Transaction simulation failed: Error processing Instruction 0: Cross-program invocation with unauthorized signer or writable account"}

You can try to run the client after setting solana config to devnet.

I checked the documentation and also discussed the issue with peers. Unfortunately the issue persisted. All help is appreciated!

Answer 1

You marked your ata accounts as signers.

{
    is_signer: true,
    is_writable: true,
    pubkey: userAta,
},
{
    is_signer: true,
    is_writable: true,
    pubkey: stakingProgramAssociatedTokenAccount,
},

Also you will have to create the token accounts after you generate their address. Check out the cookbook to learn more about the generating vs creating pdas.

https://solanacookbook.com/references/accounts.html#create-a-pda

Answer 2

So usually when I get this error it's due to the fact that the signer I am passing is wrong or due to the account not being marked as mutable and most number of times when i get stuck it's due to the fact the account not being mutable.

Answer 3

So I was able to solve the issue successfully. I needed to explicity approve my Rust program to be able to transfer tokens from user's associated token account to my Rust program's associated token account. Just be adding this code in my Rust program I was able to get it working:

         let ix = spl_token::instruction::approve(
          token_program.key,
          source_token_account.key,
          destination_token_account.key,
          initializer.key,
          &[initializer.key],
          amount,
         )?;

        invoke(
            &ix,
            &[
        source_token_account.clone(),
        destination_token_account.clone(),
        initializer.clone(),
        token_program.clone(),
            ],
        )?;
        msg!(
            "approved tx"
        );

In case others face the same issue in future, I have pushed the fully working code in this link: https://github.com/jainkrati/spl_token_staking_client_code