Algorand Enhances TEAL Smart Contract Language in Latest Upgrade

Improved developer experiences empower the Algorand community as DeFi and application building expands

BOSTON, April 14, 2021 — Algorand, a leading blockchain technology company accelerating the convergence of decentralized and traditional finance, continues to deliver on its commitment to technical innovation with the availability of its latest upgrade to its Layer-1 Smart Contracts language (TEAL), the first in a series of such enhancements. Smart Contracts on Algorand are built into Layer-1 and thus benefit from the network’s speed, security, and scalability with reduced settlement risk through trustless execution, low transaction fees, and flexible implementations needed to power complex applications.

The latest upgrade is based on direct feedback from the Algorand developer community to address and remove obstacles for viable mainstream adoption, mainly by ensuring application development is faster and more efficient. Algorand’s smart contract language, TEAL (Transaction Execution Approval Language), has been upgraded for a more optimized developer experience, while maintaining a Layer-1 language and increasing access and convenience, without compromising performance or economic efficiencies.

New features are comprised of the following distinct functionality:

Complete access to transactions in the Atomic Transfer capability
Better application permissions in addressing user demand using CreatorAddress
New opcodes addressing demands from TEAL users and TEAL compilers

º     A concise way to express requirements
º     The ability to manipulate the stack and data values in a more concise way
º     The ability to combine Atomic Transfers together

With these new features, the following are now available for developers:

Convenience functions for examining other assets and stateful smart contracts
Functions to support better stack manipulation
Support for manipulating data with bit and byte functions
Improved conditional logic capabilities

In expanding the possibilities to write more efficient smart contracts, compilers and high-level languages are empowered with this TEAL upgrade as new gateways for development. Reach, a development platform, is one such example of tooling available to Algorand developers that lowers the barrier to entry, while enabling blockchain developers to build more sophisticated applications.

"Algorand continues to deliver on innovation, and it is exciting to see TEAL opening new opportunities for the growing developer community. As a partner of Algorand empowering developers to leverage their high performing blockchain, it is a major milestone that anything written on Reach can now work on Algorand," says Chris Swenor, Founder & CEO, Reach.

Examples of applications that are now easier and more efficient to write on Algorand include:

Multiple Raffle Applications, From Traditional to a FOMO 3D Raffle
A Rent-Seeking Auction Application
NFT Generator: A Smart, Yield Generating NFT Application

This consensus protocol upgrade is the 5th for Algorand since inception, with no downtime or performance degradation— proving yet again that Algorand is built with the reliability, security, and evolving capabilities to continuously serve its developer community and pave the way for the future of finance (FutureFi).

Algorand always welcomes and values developers’ feedback as it directly impacts continued innovations. For more technical details, visit TEAL and the developer post here. For more general questions on building on Algorand, please visit our developer portal. Feedback can be submitted to: [email protected].

About Algorand
Algorand is building the technology to power the Future of Finance (FutureFi), the convergence of traditional and decentralized models into a unified system that is inclusive, frictionless, and secure. Founded by Turing Award-winning cryptographer Silvio Micali, Algorand developed a blockchain infrastructure that offers the interoperability and capacity to handle the volume of transactions needed for defi, financial institutions and governments to smoothly transition into FutureFi. The technology of choice for more than 500 global organizations, Algorand is enabling the simple creation of next generation financial products, protocols and exchange of value. For more information, visit www.algorand.com.

About the Algorand Foundation
The Algorand Foundation is dedicated to fulfilling the global promise of blockchain technology by leveraging the Algorand protocol and open source software, which was initially designed by Silvio Micali and a team of leading scientists. With core beliefs in the establishment of an open, public and permissionless blockchain, the Algorand Foundation has a vision for an inclusive ecosystem that provides an opportunity for everyone to harness the potential of an equitable and truly borderless economy. For more information, visit www.algorand.foundation.