Algorand - 'consumer' experience, questions

I have modest experience with PoW coins - buying, trading, etc. I wanted to get into PoS coins and Algorand is one of two I’m most interested in. In large part because my organization is also looking at possibly using a blockchain platform for client work product management.

Now, I wanted to get an idea of how Algorand works today for a general ‘consumer’ and started with the Algorand Android app and a Ledger. Traded a bit of BTC to Algo and voila, that much worked brilliantly (and FAST).

However, I’m confused by a number of things:

1. I add an account - on the Ledger. I name it and I get an address. That address is static for all transactions now? Unlike other coins I have experience with where I can generate a receiving address. Is this by design or a limitation of the current implementations? When I look at My Algo and others, this appears to be normal. While I’m not expecting privacy at a high-degree, it seems odd that by doing any ALGO transaction with any given party, they now know my entire holdings on that account.

2. As it pertains to (1), this appears also to tie the end-user to assets. Which, again, seems odd to me - especially if some business dealing might benefit from negotiations. You wouldn’t share you balance with a vendor before negotiating, right?

3. There is the list of ‘Verified’ assets - I found via Google the micro-shares listed aren’t for US persons. And there doesn’t appear to be any barrier (or risk) to validating against an asset you don’t do business with. It’s just ‘noise’ from what I can gather but I’d like to confirm this? If we’re toying with assets and they’re ‘not for us’, it doesn’t really matter … we can just remove them? Well, I haven’t tried removing, so can we remove?

4. I watched the video introducing the new asset features and there was the coffee example - there is a coffee example on the testnet (although it doesn’t appear to be the same one). There is also the verified Tether asset. It appears these use your ALGO address (again and issue for (1)). They are different units of issuance which makes sense. However, for something like Tether … how do I get my existing Tether INTO Algorand (the USDT asset, not into ALGO)? I see USDT-ALGO listed on some exchanges but it appears to just be tracking ALGO against USDT. One cursory check and putting my ALGO address as the receiver doesn’t validate to send.

I understand this is all RAPIDLY developing so perhaps the answer is ‘sit tight, it’s all coming’ - I just want some semblance of privacy options if they exist today. Before I start exploring assets more closely.

To be clear - I don’t always want (or can expect) privacy with a asset partner. However, I would think P2P trading or other activities in the future would desire some privacy. Right?

Thank you for your time, Cheers, -Pk

Hi,

I’m not sure about the last two, so I’m going to ignore these for now.

As for your first question - when you create an account, this is the address where you would accept ALGOs and assets into. At any time, you can close this account into a different account, and switch to a new account address.

If you want to prevent the other party from knowing your address, you can create a new account, and give that account to the payer. Once this account is funded, you can use the key to either move the funds into your “primary” account, or just leave it there.

Note that all the transactions on the Algorand platform are publicly visible, so nothing is happening behind the scene. Your local node is verifying all the operations on every block, just like all the others.

Note that I didn’t really said much about the Ledger. Assuming that you’re referring to the Ledger hardware wallet, than it wouldn’t make a huge difference if you use it or not in the context of your question ( in terms of account address management ).

Each account is a whole process, keys, etc. though - right? That’s what it looks like in the app.

That is a lot of work for something every other coin I’ve touched just ‘does’ normally. Given the credentials of the Algorand staff, this must be a design decision for a reason. However, I can’t find it … I can only speculate it has something to do with the requirement that ‘clawback’ and other things exist.

I’d love for some verification of that though. The reasoning.

Yeah, like everything blockchain I get that - again, I wasn’t expecting ZEC privacy, just thought it was odd that unmasking people was so trivial. In fairly short order in adoption, one custodial sites w/ a ‘contacts’ feature, could one-to-one map a TON of people and complete assets. While the same class of risk exists on other chains, it’s not quite so in-your-face complete right off the bat.

Thanks for those answers!

Hoping someone can chime in and clarify more - and address (4) especially. Cheers, -Pk

On 4, you should be able to:
1 - go to bitfinex
2 - deposit your tether
3 -withdraw as algo-tether

Alright - so I tried this on an exchange I have an account on but it seems to think the destination address is invalid. Am I missing something? There isn’t a different receive address when I add Tether as an asset. So it just ‘knows’ that goes into that compatible asset?

I may try Bitfinex specifically if they support it, it may be that easy … just a bit confused. Thank you for your response, Cheers, -Pk

So initially I thought you meant just send funds from the new account to the other but you said “key” and now I can’t figure that out. Is there a reference for how this is done? This almost sounds like you’re saying I can import the private key for the new account into my ‘main’ account but I’m unsure how that works. Usually when I import a private key it restores a whole wallet, not into an account. So this could be my own ignorance. Appreciate your time, Cheers, -Pk

I can’t edit my original response anymore @JasonW but this indeed did work in the end. Thanks much! -Pk