Passing minContextSlot value in getSignaturesForAddress RPC method does not filter transactions

Question

I'm using the solana/web3.js library (I tried both Alchemy and Quicknode endpoints). When I try to filter the results on getSignaturesForAddress using minContextSlot passing a specific slot (for example, 173290599), it returns the same result as when I omit this option (i.e., all transactions without filtering).

I've tried using both Quicknode and Alchemy for the RPC connection. Here is the code:

const signatures = await this.solanaConnection.getSignaturesForAddress(pubKey, { minContextSlot: fromSlot });

Answer 1

This is some unclear behavior about how minContextSlot works. It's meant to check that the RPC node is at least up to a certain slot to avoid accessing stale data, and not as a filtering mechanism.

If you wanted to add the functionality, it would be really easy! You just need to add a new filtering parameter on the get_signatures_for_address RPC, and then change the highest_slot to that new parameter in this line: https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/blob/bd9b311c630a10bb5c16b567e51bd61c21aabff9/rpc/src/rpc.rs#L1591, so you'd do:

let request_slot = // something passed in to the function
blockstore.get_confirmed_signatures_for_address2(address, request_slot, before, until, limit)

Answer 2

If you wanted to implement it with the current API, you could use connection.getBlock(minSlot - j) with j=1.. until you hit a block, extract one of the transactions from it and pass its signature to until.

Or you choose the pragmatic version and filter the return value of getSignaturesForAddress using item.slot >= minSlot.