Important Notice
The only official governance website is governance.algorand.foundation.
Any other addresses claiming to be for the official program - even if they look similar - are fake sites built by criminals to steal your Algo. Do not connect your wallet to those websites.
Governor’s Guide 2025
This guide describes how to participate in the Algorand community governance.
To become a Governor, you must:
- Commit your Algos during the designated commitment phase.
- Vote on all proposed measures during the voting phase.
- Maintain your committed Algo balance until the voting phase concludes.
Key changes for you to note:
- There are no longer rewards for participating in governance voting.
- The locking period for your committed Algos and/or LP tokens now only includes the commitment phase immediately followed by the voting phase.
This guide will demonstrate how to:
- Sign in and connect your cryptocurrency wallet.
- Commit your desired amount of Algos for the governance period.
- Cast your votes on proposals throughout a governance period.
Participating in Algorand Governance
From Q2 2025, governance periods will be created only when there are important measures to be voted on. These periods will be composed of a short sign-up phase of 1 to 2 weeks, immediately followed by a 1-week voting phase.
You will need to sign up anew for each period during the sign-up window. To be a governor, you need to have an Algorand address that you control, using a wallet or a custodian.
Using the Algorand Governance portal
You can access the governance dashboard at https://governance.algorand.foundation/.
Committing Phase
Step 1 - Connecting your wallet
The first step is to connect your wallet to the dashboard by clicking the “Connect Wallet” button. This button will open a dialog box, where you can choose which wallet application you want to use.
Step 2 - Committing Algo
Once your wallet is connected, you need to specify how many Algos you want to commit to the governance period.
To do this, click the “Commit Algos” button, which will open another dialog box, asking for the number of Algos to commit.
Remember, each Algo you commit equals one vote.
IMPORTANT: It is NOT RECOMMENDED to commit the entire balance in your address, because you are expected to send a few zero-Algo transactions – to commit and to vote – from your governing address during the governance period, and you will have to pay the transaction fees for them. If you commit the maximum amount, it may cause your address balance to dip below the committed level, which will make your account ineligible to vote. We recommend committing at most 1 Algo less than the balance in your governing address.
Step 3 - Committing LP tokens
In addition, you can also choose to commit eligible LP Tokens already in your wallet through the same webpage.
The “Commit LP” drop-down menu will show you which of your ASA are eligible in the connected wallet. You can specify how many of the LP Tokens you want to commit, along with your Algo commitment.
Without rewards, you should leave the “beneficiary address” field blank.
Once the sign-up window closes, you will NOT be able to change your commitment for the period.
Voting Phase
Similarly to sign-up, voting is done by sending a ZERO-Algo transaction to the governance target address for that period. You can do this using one of the supported wallets, using any wallet that supports WalletConnect, or using any other wallet that supports sending Algo transactions with a note field.
You can vote by accessing the governance system dashboard at https://governance.algorand.foundation/, and performing the following steps:
Step 1. Connecting your Wallet
This step is identical to the first step of the sign-up process, and you must use the same address that you signed up with.
Step 2. Selecting Options for Ballot Measures
After connecting your wallet, you need to choose one option for each voting measure. To access the voting page, click the voting measure that says “Open to Vote”.
On the voting page, you will see a description of the measures and the different options for each measure, and radio buttons that let you choose one option for each measure.
After selecting the options that you want to vote for, you must click the button at the bottom of the page to submit your vote.
Step 3. Submitting your Vote
After you click the button to submit your vote, you need to sign the voting transactions. This is similar to committing the Algos during sign-up, and varies depending on which wallet you are using.
Verifying your Status
Upon committing your desired amount of Algos, visit the Governor’s page to verify your eligibility.
- Click on the Wallet Address button at the top right corner of the page and navigate to My Governor Page.
- Check the status of the commitment, it should read “Eligible”
Troubleshooting Transactions
If you have issues with committing or voting where the transaction hangs on your wallet, try disconnecting your wallet, refreshing the page, and reconnecting. Then, try again.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, the simple action of disconnecting and reconnecting your wallet solves the problem. If the problem persists for you, but you can see that voting from other governors are coming through, please contact your wallet’s support team.
Verifying your Vote
We highly recommend that you verify your vote transaction was processed correctly by checking your wallet’s transaction records list, as well as your “My Gov” page. It is a good habit to always verify the transaction a few minutes after the vote is processed, to ensure you have time to act in case you identify an issue.
Building your own Transactions
Your Commitment Transaction
Please commit with a ZERO-ALGO transaction only. Each governance period has a different escrow account. You can verify the escrow account by visiting the current governance period’s page.
You then need to sign and send a zero-Algo transaction using your wallet, from your governance address to the address shown in the dialog box, putting in the notes field the content of the Note field, as below.
Note field for signing up to Governance only
(Example 1: af/gov1:j{“com”:3000000}).
Note field for also committing eligible LP token(s)
(Example 2: af/gov1:j{“com”:5000,“552701368”:400,“607645566”:1000}).
Once this transaction is sent to the network, click the button saying “I’ve sent the transaction” and refresh the page to have the dashboard reflect your commitment.
For both examples listed above, you would use the command line tool goal below to send the following transaction to the blockchain:
Example 1:
% goal clerk send -a 0 -f AWALLETADRESSHEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE -t ANOTHERWALLETADDRESSHEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE -n ‘af/gov1:j{“com”:3000000}’
Example 2: Eligible LP tokens notes field example
% goal clerk send -a 0 -f AWALLETADRESSHEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE -t ANOTHERWALLETADDRESSHEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE -n ‘af/gov1:j{“com”:5000,“552701368”:400,“607645566”:1000}’
Your Voting Transaction
For the wallets where the note field is required, the note is similar to the sign-up note, but not exactly the same. Specifically, the format of it is:
af/gov1:j[idx,list-of-options]
Where idx is the internal index of this voting session; for Governance Period 5, for example, we had idx=7. The options depend on the voting session in question; for example, if the voting session has three measures, each a choice of either “a” or “b”, then the accepted formats for the notes field in the vote are af/gov1:j[7,“X”,“Y”,“Z”] where the session-index is 7, and X,Y,Z are either a or b.
So, for example, if you vote b for the 1st and 3rd measures and “a” for the 2nd, then you will send af/gov1:j[7,“b”,“a”,“b”].
When connected to “other wallets”, clicking the “Submit vote” button will open a dialog box: The below example pertains to the second period of Governance and is only presented as an example.
You will need to send a ZERO-Algo transaction for voting on both measures.
For example, using the command line tool goal, you should issue the following command to vote for option A in both measures of the voting session (from governance address ALDJ4…N4 in this example):
% goal clerk send -a 0 -f AWALLETADRESSHEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE -t **ANOTHERWALLETADDRESSHEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE -n ‘af/gov1:j[7,“b”,“a”,“b”]’
Remember, a ZERO-Algo transaction still carries a 0.001 Algo fee. Make sure that your account has enough Algos to ensure the balance does not drop below the committed Algo amount, as that will change your governor account status to “Not eligible”.