How can a system transfer instruction not result in a corresponding balance change?

Question

I found a mainnet transaction with an inner system transfer instruction which does not seem to create a corresponding SOL balance change.

The inner system transafer is transfering 0.001 SOL from CmiPgGfWeteicRisWRuJzn7L649zWpw9Qya8g3ey9cZt to 3uTzTX5GBSfbW7eM9R9k95H7Txe32Qw3Z25MtyD2dzwC.

Looking at the pre and post SOL balances of the transaction, we can see that the only balance change that happenned is that the 5000 lamports fee was deducted from the transaction fee payer CmiPgGfWeteicRisWRuJzn7L649zWpw9Qya8g3ey9cZt. It seems like the system transfer instruction had no effect.

I verified the following:

• The transaction completed succefully.
• The system program logged a success.
• The system transfer source and destination accounts are different.
• The system transfer amount is greater than 0.
• I did not find any other instruction which could compensate for the SOL transferred by the system transfer instruction.

Any idea why the corresponding balance change did not happen?

Answer 1

3uTz... is owned by the program invoked, HvwYjjzPbXWpykgVZhqvvfeeaSraQVnTiQibofaFw9M7, so that program can freely deduct lamports from 3uTz....

You'd have to look into what HvwYjjzPbXWpykgVZhqvvfeeaSraQVnTiQibofaFw9M7 is doing exactly to be sure, but most likely it's refunding the lamports by simply subtracting the lamports from 3uTz... and adding them back to the initial sender.

An owning program can change data and deduct lamports from any account it owns, so the program is probably doing that. Here's a sample program that does it: https://github.com/solana-labs/solana-program-library/blob/master/examples/rust/transfer-lamports/src/processor.rs