Guidelines

The following list of guidelines should be followed when working with TEAL.

• Use or modify example templates which are designed to embody best practices.

• TEAL code should validate as many txn fields as possible. Things not checked could become set to anything.

• Always verify that the RekeyTo property of any transaction is set to the ZeroAddress unless the contract is specifically involved in a rekeying operation.

• Version 2 of smart contracts must have the first line of code specified with #pragma version 2. If this is not in the code, the contract will be interpreted as a version 1 contract. Also, when upgrading version 1 contracts make sure to check for rekeying transactions as this could cause the account to be easily rekeyed to another account.

• CloseRemainderTo or AssetCloseTo should be the intended recipient or equal to global ZeroAddress. An unchecked address could steal all the value!

• When not closing out a contract account, Amount or AssetAmount should be checked to be equal to the intended transfer amount.

• Fee should be less than some reasonable amount (in micro-Algos). An unchecked Fee could burn the entire value of the contract account!

• Type or TypeEnum can be checked to ensure something is a Payment or AssetXfer or another transaction type.

• Sender doesn’t need to be checked. It gets checked automatically.

• Using a contract account limits your exposure as compared to a delegated account. (Mistakes and bugs can only lose as much as you put into that account. If you can close out that account it closes out any exposure.)

• Counterpoint: using a regular private/public key account with delegated logic allows you to always use the private key to sign any transaction and not be locked into only what the logic allows.

• Contract accounts should have an expiration in the future (txn FirstValid > NNNN, or txn FirstValidTime > TTTT) after which the originator can reclaim their assets.

• Delegated LogicSigs may wish to specify an expiration round in the future after which they will no longer function.

• Transaction groups must be designed with ‘slots’ such that each transaction will know what position it is in. A transaction’s logic can check (txn GroupIndex == K && global GroupSize == M) and then also check specific other transactions by their index through gtxn N field

Example:

txn[0] sends N Algos from A to B; program checks that (M/N >= desired exchange rate) and (gtxn 1 Receiver == A)

txn[1] sends M AltCoin from B to A; program checks that (N/M >= desired exchange rate) and (gtxn 0 Receiver == B)

• Corollary to checking as many txn fields as possible: be strict with other transaction properties in a group.

• Verify the GroupSize to make sure the size corresponds to the number of transactions the logic is expecting.

Tips and Patterns

In addition to following the guidelines, the following tips and patterns may also be useful.

• A contract account that requires CloseRemainderTo or AssetCloseTo being equal to the intended recipient is good for a conditional all-or-nothing payment.

• A recurring payment contract should combine (FirstValid % N == 0) and (Lease == xxxxx), where N is the period of the recurring payment in rounds, at least 1000.

• Some operations panic and exit the transaction validation with an immediate fail. For example a divide-by-zero. It’s possible to test for these and skip panicking instructions with a bnz branch-if-not-zero instruction.