# Getting Started

**Yellowstone** is a high-performance Solana validator client designed with extensibility and speed in mind. It offers powerful **gRPC support** via its **Geyser plugin**, enabling developers to subscribe to a wide range of real-time Solana events — including account changes, transaction confirmations, and slot updates — with minimal latency.

To start working with Yellowstone gRPC, you’ll need two key components:

* **gRPC Endpoint** – The <mark style="color:yellow;">endpoint</mark> where the gRPC service is exposed.
* **x-token** – An <mark style="color:yellow;">access token</mark> required to authenticate your connection.

Before establishing a connection, ensure you’ve installed the **Yellowstone gRPC package**, which provides the necessary tools and client bindings for communicating with the gRPC service.

<figure><img src="/files/ckGRZ2vP6m0OZGtj6M4g" alt=""><figcaption><p>Region specific gRPC endpoint and access token from the Shyft Dashboard</p></figcaption></figure>

Once set up, you can begin streaming real-time Solana data with precision and performance.


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.shyft.to/solana-yellowstone-grpc/docs/getting-started.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.
