Algorand Foundation closes its forum and advisory council, pauses xGov and drops the plan to lift the ALGO supply cap

The Algorand Foundation closed its community forum and ended its Ecosystem Advisory Council on Friday 6 November 2026, and said it will pause the xGov grants programme indefinitely from 6 December. In the same community update on its blog, the organisation behind ALGO also shelved Project King Safety, its plan to pay for network security once the Foundation-funded staking bonus runs out. Lifting the 10 billion ALGO supply cap, capturing MEV and raising the minimum transaction fee are all off the table.

What stays is a promise to stakers. The Foundation says the bonus staking rewards it funds will run through January 2028, a commitment it calls existing and says “stands”. It did not say what replaces that money afterwards. New usage-based fees, like the ones already charged on transactions signed with Falcon-1024 post-quantum keys, “may still be introduced or adjusted”, and the Foundation will say more “if and when that work progresses”.

The reason comes in its first line. “Algorand has new leadership and a renewed focus on building toward a sustainable, revenue-generating network model,” it says. William Herkelrath has run the Foundation since 31 August. The changes shut the forum, the grants programme and the councils through which the community spoke to the Foundation, less than ten months after the advisory council was set up to give the ecosystem an earlier say on exactly this kind of decision.

What the Algorand Foundation closed on 6 November, and what stops on 6 December

The forum at forum.algorand.co goes first. It closed on 6 November and will stay online as a read-only archive. The Foundation says it had mostly served as the home of xGov discussion in recent years, and it now points developers, node runners and builders to the Algorand Discord for technical news and support.

xGov, the programme that paid grants for open-source work through community votes, is paused indefinitely from 6 December. The update gives no reason beyond the company’s shifting focus and thanks the members of the xGov Council. It does not say how much money was left in the programme, nor whether proposals already submitted will be paid before the pause.

The Ecosystem Advisory Council ended “as a company-run body” on 6 November. The wording leaves room for members to keep meeting on their own, but the Foundation no longer runs it. It also ended its sponsorship of the Algorand Technical Council. Periodic Developer Council meetings on technical topics continue, and anyone can ask for an invitation on Discord.

Signed “Algorand”, the text speaks of “a company”. It sits on the Algorand Foundation’s site, whose footer names The Algorand Foundation US, Inc., a Delaware corporation; the Foundation announced its return to the United States and a new board on 14 January 2026. The update’s own disclaimer says the information is provided by the Algorand Foundation.

The advisory council lasted less than ten months

The Foundation introduced the Ecosystem Advisory Council on its blog on 20 January 2026. It had nine seats: three community representatives, taken from the top three of the 2025 xGov council election; three leaders of the largest Algorand projects by total value locked; two seats for principal stakers, still empty at launch; and a chair.

The named members were Simon Belingar of Cosmic Champs, Patrick Bennett of TxnLab and Uroš Hudomalj of Valar Solutions for the community, Jerry Chu of Lofty, Benedetto Biondi of Folks Finance and Fergal Walsh of Tinyman for the projects. Paweł Pierścionek (known as Urtho) of Nodely chaired it and was also to advise the board on technical matters.

The promises were specific. The Foundation said it would bring key protocol proposals to the council for feedback before showing them to the wider community, that the council would meet Foundation leadership at least twice a year, and that it would send the board a written assessment of ecosystem health at least once a year. The 6 November update does not say whether King Safety’s end went through the council first. The January post now opens with a note that the council has been concluded.

From paid governance to xGov: what the community had before

Algorand used to pay people to vote. Its Governance Rewards programme ran for about three and a half years until the Foundation wrapped it up on 31 March 2025. By its own count, it handed out 687.5 million ALGO, most of it (526.8 million) as direct rewards to governors who locked their coins and voted. An average of about 25,000 governors took part in each period, with a peak near 50,000, and they voted on 80 measures.

The wrap-up post set out what would follow. Votes were to continue without pay, in four-week periods of two weeks of commitment and two weeks of voting. A new xGov council, which the community elected in July 2025, would review grant proposals, and an xGov platform would fund open-source work retroactively. Money for securing the chain moved to a separate programme of staking rewards.

Of that structure, voting without pay is the only piece the update does not mention. The grants platform stops in December, and the advisory council built on top of the xGov election is gone. Algorand is not alone in pulling decisions back toward a central team: Optimism recently proposed letting its Lead nominate Security Council members, as we reported in our piece on the end of Optimism’s Security Council elections.

Project King Safety is shelved: no inflation, no MEV, no higher minimum fee

King Safety was the Foundation’s answer to a problem it described itself. In its 2025 roadmap post of 23 September 2025, it wrote that “the fee structure doesn’t provide enough financial incentives for stakers” and that the supplementary staking reward “will run against the fixed maximum supply of 10 billion Algo”. All 10 billion ALGO were created at genesis, so the Foundation pays the bonus out of coins that already exist, and it cannot do so forever.

The roadmap named three possible sources of long-term pay for stakers: fees, MEV and inflation. The Foundation promised a position paper by the end of 2025 and implementation in 2026. The roadmap post now carries a note sending readers to the 6 November update.

Now each of the three is closed in turn. Inflation would have meant lifting the supply cap to mint new ALGO. MEV, the value block producers can earn by ordering transactions, would have been enabled and captured; our guide to MEV, block builders and sandwich attacks explains why that cuts both ways for users. A higher minimum fee would have charged every transaction more. The Foundation says none is “being considered at this time”.

One door stays open. Fees tied to specific uses, such as those already charged on transactions signed with Falcon-1024 post-quantum keys, may be added or changed. The Foundation gives no rates and no date.

The update closes its staking section on one sentence: “Our priority is clear: a sustainable network and continued rewards for those who help secure it.” It puts no figure on those rewards after January 2028.

Who pays Algorand stakers after January 2028?

Today an Algorand staker earns from two sources, according to the Foundation’s staking rewards page. Half of all transaction fees go to the block proposer. On top of that, the Foundation pays a bonus that started at 10 ALGO per block and falls by 1% every million blocks. Blocks are finalised about every 2.8 seconds, and an account must stake at least 30,000 ALGO to earn anything, a threshold set by a community vote.

At the starting rate and one block every 2.8 seconds, our own arithmetic puts the bonus at a little over 300,000 ALGO a day; the decay has lowered it since. The Foundation says it will keep paying it until January 2028. Its September 2025 roadmap credited the programme with cutting the Foundation’s own share of total stake from 63% to 21% and more than doubling validator participation to almost 2,000 nodes in over 70 countries.

After January 2028, the update leaves stakers with fees alone, the source the Foundation itself said in 2025 does not pay enough. It does not say how big the fee pot is or how far usage-based fees could fill the gap. Osmosis made a similar move in October when it ended OSMO inflation, leaving its stakers on a fee pot of about $2,000 a day, as we reported in our piece on Osmosis staking rewards.

For people who run a node or stake ALGO, the practical date is January 2028. Until then nothing in the update changes the rules of the bonus. After it, the yield depends on network fees and on whatever the Foundation decides about usage-based charges, and the Foundation has not published a plan for either.

A new CEO, a smaller team and a post-quantum pitch

William Herkelrath was named chief executive in a press release on 9 September 2026, which said he had officially taken the job on 31 August. He succeeded Staci Warden, who stepped down “after nearly five years leading Algorand”, the release says. Herkelrath is a former Chainlink executive and cofounder of K3 Labs, an AI automation platform. CoinDesk, in a report the Foundation reposted on its blog, said he would lead its push “into institutional finance and quantum-resistant security”.

His arrival followed a cut. On 18 March 2026, Decrypt reported, the Foundation said it had reduced its workforce by 25%, citing the uncertain global macro environment and the crypto downturn. The headcount behind that percentage was not given.

The 6 November update puts post-quantum security at the centre of what comes next. The Foundation says Falcon post-quantum signatures have run on Algorand since 2022, followed by quantum-resistant transactions in 2025 and native post-quantum accounts in 2026. Its next step is to sell that capability to custodians, wallet providers, issuers and other networks, so they can add it without rebuilding their systems. Revenue from that work is what the Foundation links to keeping investment in the chain going.

ALGO trades under 10 cents, and the move cannot be tied to the update

ALGO traded near $0.0951 at 07:39 UTC on Saturday 7 November on Coinbase’s ALGO-USD market. On Thursday it had reached $0.1014 before closing the UTC day at $0.09166. On Friday it rose from there, touched $0.09865 during the 17:00 UTC hour and closed the day at $0.09562. The time of day the update went out is not known; the earliest dated report found, from Blockchain.News, was stamped 17:05 UTC. That is not enough to link the price to the news, and no market coverage of a reaction was found.

The wider market was weak. Bitcoin traded near $75,950 at 07:16 UTC on Saturday and the Crypto Fear and Greed Index stood at 25.

What ALGO holders and builders still do not know

Several gaps remain. The Foundation does not explain why xGov is paused beyond the new focus, how much grant money remains, or whether pending proposals will be honoured. It gives no date for anything that might replace King Safety. It does not say who will fund staking rewards after January 2028, or what usage-based fees could bring in.

No public reaction from xGov Council or advisory council members was found by Saturday morning. With the forum closed, that discussion moves to the Algorand Discord, the channel the Foundation now names, and to social media.

Proof of stake and governance tokens, briefly

Algorand secures its chain with a form of proof of stake: holders who stake ALGO through a node take turns proposing blocks and are paid for it. Who pays them, and from what, is the question King Safety was meant to answer.

Governance is a separate layer. On many chains a token gives a vote on grants, fees or upgrades, and the weight of a foundation or a few large holders often decides the result; our guide to governance tokens and who holds power in a DAO covers how that works. On Algorand, from 6 December, the Foundation’s own grant votes stop.

The next date to watch is 6 December, when xGov grants pause. The one after that is January 2028, when the Foundation’s staking bonus is due to end.