Revisiting the Conversation around ASA Opt-in and Airdrop Architecture

Hi Algo community,

So as I understand it, on Algorand, an account address still needs to sign an “opt-in” txn in order to receive an ASA. This is different than how a lot of the other blockchains handle a case like this.

I know this topic has been brought up before but I just want to revisit this design choice with some of the Algo Foundation devs on this forum.

Requiring an “opt-in” txn makes many use cases (like airdrops) very difficult and IMO is somewhat antithetical to the concept of a “public permissionless blockchain”. I understand the intention of a positive opt-in so users don’t get bombarded with “memecoins” etc. But if I’m sending an ASA token and an additional 0.101 algo to cover the increased min balance and txn fee, why don’t we handle this on the recipient’s end to filter out ASAs they don’t want? Such as a feature to filter out or send back unwanted tokens in the mobile wallet (e.g. Pera). Due to the increased min balance and txn fee that the sender needs to cover, it is not economical to spam “memecoins” to random addresses.

Another analogy is: as email users, we get bombarded with unwanted marketing emails or scam emails, but we don’t require users to opt into an email address before being able to receive emails. Emails are filtered out into scam folder, or blocked on the recipient’s end. Being able to openly send information and letting the end user decide whether it’s useful is somewhat of a core philosophy behind the Internet.

The best way to help us solve for opt-in friction is to build awareness and momentum around this draft ARC-59:

This seems like a good solution. There is no way to change this on the protocol level?

Also, what exactly do we do to build awareness and momentum around this proposal?

There is always a “way” but there are significant costs and trade-offs that have been discussed at great length for years, and that’s how ARC-59 came to be as the current way forward.

I would encourage folks who are devs or passionate super-users to familiarize themselves with ARCs that solve problems they care about, ask their favorite apps to integrate those standards, leave comments on PRs, and help increase word-of-mouth about the ARC process and site in social channels.

Forming consensus around standards is often more difficult than developing the technology, so we at the Foundation appreciate all partnership from community members on this front

https://arc.algorand.foundation/

https://tech-radar.algorand.foundation/

I suppose much of this is a matter of “out of sight, out of mind.” Even for those with the technical skill/knowledge, they may not be constantly checking in on these arcs (or even know they exist).

Perhaps there are ways these can be bumped into the community consciousness via periodic calls to comment or reminders. Just as an example, there could be an “ARC of the Week” that gets mentioned/described and solicits feedback.

I agree. I’m going to be doing a planning session before Decipher to strategize for 2H24 into next year, and this topic is on my list.