Raise MaxAppTotalTxnReferences (currently 8, extremely limiting)

[MetaB0y]

Problem

I am trying to build composable DeFi on Algorand.

Currently, there are 2 things that make it next to impossible.

1. Transaction can have at most 8 references total. There are 3 types of references: other apps, accounts, and assets.
2. Each app has a specific account associated with it, so it takes 2 references: app and account. I think Smart contracts should be given access to accounts for apps specified in the foreign apps array #3723 is about this issue.

Why is it so limiting?

Suppose I want to build the simplest possible DEX aggregator which will use only 2 DEXes. There will be 3 applications (aggregator, DEX1, DEX2) that will take 3*2=6 resources. And 4 assets (asset A, asset B, LP token 1, LP token 2). It will be 10 in total, more than it is currently possible.

Even if the issue (2) will be fixed, it is still easy to exhaust available resources. My aggregator would take "only" 7 resources. But what if I want e.g. to aggregate 3 DEXes? It will be impossible.

Solution

To make it possible to build "normal" EVM chains like DeFi ecosystem, it is paramount to raise MaxAppTotalTxnReferences to at least 32 together with fixing the issue (2) and raising MaxAppTxnForeignApps and MaxAppTxnForeignAssets to at least 16.

I have no idea how complicated this is, but the natural first step would be to increase MaxAppTxnForeignApps to 16 which will be far from perfect, but much better than the current state. I believe most DeFi applications will be able to work under such conditions (given that issue (2) is fixed).

Urgency

I am building a pretty simple app and already being severely blocked by this problem, I think that a lot of people will stumble upon it in the next few months.

[algoanne]

Hi, we are taking a different approach to solving this problem - we will allow the references to be shared across the transaction group. See #4391 for this upcoming work.