Better management needed for Locked-In ALGOs from opting-in smart contracts on Algorand network

Hello,

So is there any on-going development to better manage these locked-in ALGOs whenever a user is opting into a smart contract or defi app within the network? I assume it will only get worse as people opt-in to more contracts in this growing ecosystem by the way it’s currently managed (or really, not managed at all).

This is a weird hassle, since the opt-in fees are never large enough to be critical, but annoying enough to deter away from potentially using the ALGO asset when someone needs to manage and transfer it quickly (really defeating the purpose here of using blockchain tech imho). Instead, people have to pause the transfer process by having to sign into each dapp and opt-out one by one, so you can withdraw i.e. 100 ALGOs instead of 97.36 ALGOs. At the very least, there should be an indicator or notifier of sort in our wallet/one single platform which we can easily tell what our true balance is with and without the locked-in ALGOs, so users can transfer the adequate amount seamlessly.

Kind of ridiculous you are forcing users to keep track of this manually on each dapp platform’s end and making transactions fail.

I have yet to come across this issue when I participate in defi apps from other blockchains - why does Algorand require users to lock-in their ALGOs like this?

This is a very good point. Wallets should definitely support that.
You can do it manually via an API query but it’s not user-friendly at all.

I wrote a post here: Asset Limit Account and Minimum Balance - #2 by fabrice

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Appreciate the attached concise explanation! I actually didn’t know ETH has similar system except the fee is never returned (I assume this is same for other PoS consensus protocols too?), whereas Algorand does return it. That is one big fat point I/Algo community can highlight whenever this topic comes up in future.

And yes, it will be downright embarrassing(!) if we fail to transfer assets within Algorand network after boasting how game-changing it will be due to this pitiful, small hiccup in user experience.

Hey Fabrice!

I believe it was you who I talked to last time about this opted-in smart contract fees. And you gave me an example of how ETH network technically has this smart contract fee built into the gas fees(?) and alike blockchains. It’s just that Algorand is transparent enough to actually allow you to take this back once you opt-out and let you see the amount, not necessarily that Algorand is trying to make things difficult on purpose here operational-wise.

Can you please point me to any docs I can read into more about this? Having hard time what to actually search on Google to pop them up.

Best,

See Algos and assets - Algorand Developer Portal for assets.
I’ve also made a PR to clarify this in the documentation: Clarify minimum balance text by fabrice102 · Pull Request #824 · algorand/docs · GitHub

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Maybe Algorand Foundation should develop better toolings for people to entre in defi more safely and efficiently before trying to force native $ALGO governors to unprotected sub-market through a 3-month proposal of one option (measure b is literally just “keep in status quo”, which translates to NO). I’m honestly disappointed in their leadership as they’re seemingly failing to see the big pictures here.