Confidential Transfer Solana Setup script failing

Question

I am trying to understand Solana Confidential Transfers, so I ran this script from the official Solana repository for a simple demonstration

https://github.com/solana-labs/solana-program-library/blob/master/token/cli/examples/confidential-transfer.sh

However, I received an error when running this line in the script above, when trying to configure the confidential transfer account

spl-token create-account "$mint_pubkey" confidential-source.json

The error is shown below

+ spl-token configure-confidential-transfer-account --address DCCjUaxxhBHn8ZSddFRxfYLr7mbXE5dP2DzV3mn3is4C

Error: Client(Error { request: Some(SendTransaction), kind: RpcError(RpcResponseError { code: -32002, message: "Transaction simulation failed: Attempt to load a program that does not exist", data: SendTransactionPreflightFailure(RpcSimulateTransactionResult { err: Some(ProgramAccountNotFound), logs: Some([]), accounts: None, units_consumed: Some(0), return_data: None }) }) })

I ensured that the command below was run beforehand

spl-token create-account "$mint_pubkey" confidential-source.json

Am new to Solana, came from EVM background so I may be missing some gaps in my understanding

Answer 1

I think the token proof program for confidential transfers is not yet deployed to mainnet. It will come with Solana version 1.18.x.

https://github.com/anza-xyz/agave/wiki/v1.18-Release-Schedule

They may be already on devnet. Not sure. But you can for sure run them locally already:

1. Clone the token extensions repo: https://github.com/solana-labs/solana-program-library/tree/master/token/program-2022
2. run cargo build-sbf to build the program
3. start the test validator solana-test-validator --bpf-program TokenzQdBNbLqP5VEhdkAS6EPFLC1PHnBqCXEpPxuEb path/to/your/solana-program-library/target/deploy/spl_token_2022.so
4. cargo install --version 3.4.0 spl-token-cli ; this install the binary to ~/.cargo/bin/spl-token for me
5. run spl-token --version ; if this still gives 3.3.0, then the path to spl-token command is set to spl-token binary that comes with the solana-install package. You can verify this by running which spl-token.
6. If step 2 gives 3.4.0, then you should be able to run the confidential transfers no problem. If it gives 3.3.0, then you can update the path (temporarily if you like) so that ~/.cargo/bin/spl-token takes precedence over the solana release active package (for me it is ~/.local/share/solana/install/active_release/bin/spl-token).