The xGov Council was initially designed for 11 to 13 members. However, we received a lower-than-anticipated number of applications. This may be partly attributed to the recent governance measure requiring candidate names to be publicly known, which passed with over 85% approval, indicating a community preference for greater transparency.
Future Consideration: It is worth noting that a future governance measure to reconsider the known-identity requirement for council candidates could be introduced before the election of the subsequent council.
To ensure a robust and high-quality council, and a vibrant election process, we are considering reducing the number of council seats from 11 to 7 for this inaugural term.
Benefits
Focus on Quality: A smaller, highly qualified group will ensure each council member brings significant expertise and dedication to the role. Our primary objective is to establish a council of the highest caliber.
Enhanced Election Dynamics: A reduced number of seats will create a more competitive environment for candidates, encouraging greater engagement and participation from the community.
Optimizing Resources: Streamlining the council size allows for more efficient resource allocation and decision-making in the initial phase.
We believe this adjustment to 7 seats would result in a stronger, more effective, and high-quality xGov Council and a more dynamic community election. The intention is to adapt to the current circumstances and ensure the long-term success of the xGov program.
View ARC-83 for details about the application process.
Current applications with final status
You can view the current applications on our xGov repository on Github.
We will keep the applications open for another week to give those who have considered applying a little more time. The final submission deadline has been extended to Monday, 9 June 2025.
Election Timeline
The release of the new xGov platform on testnet for community feedback is scheduled for mid-to-late June. As approved in Governance Measure 13, the xGov council will be elected through a general governance vote, therefore we are planning on running the one month general governance period required for the election in parallel to the test phase to have the council election timed with the switch over to mainnet in July.
In the meantime, we welcome your feedback about the above.
Why not have another snap vote now instead of waiting?
There is a consistent problem of AF failing to reiterate and act quickly based on feedback. From gov rewards, to TDR, to everything else. And, this whole xGov process has moved at the pace of a geriatric glacier.
The fact that we have poor applicant participation is feedback. That feedback can be acted on now with a new vote. People can assess that feedback and see if they changed their mind. If the vote result is the same, then fine. If not, then we have fixed something without having to wait a year to do so.
85% approval yes, but the topics to be voted on were biased, framed and loaded. In lack of better language.
There is no shame in reversing course and truly take the feedback to heart. The, as Ghost put it, geriatric pace of xgov process is becoming anecdotical at best, and incompetent at worst.
We are losing to the clock, literally, as years go by and vetted teams with impressive track record, creating public goods or other valuable protocols, don’t even have a way to apply for support while waiting on the xgov platform. Even if Staci said there is some ways to get support, in the recent x space, which turned out to be less than obvious or even true.
Perhaps this solution is simplistic, but couldn’t we change the requirement from publicly doxxing to doxxing privately to AF under a confidentiality agreement?
That way we can adhere to the gov vote and not need to wait more months and can have the anonymous remaining people feeling comfortable that people won’t come hunting them down for their monies.
I agree instead of arbitrarily changing the council setup why not call it what it is…a bad idea/failure and revote for what everyone seems to want which is a dox to foundation and not psuedo permanently on github?
Thanks, all, for your feedback. I understand the doxxing requirement has created some frustration.
We must also consider the measure’s passing as feedback. If nobody wanted this, it would’ve been nipped in the bud. There’s no guarantee that a follow-up measure would reverse the result.
I’ve added this topic to our internal weekly meeting agenda to explore adding a measure to reconsider the doxxing with the voting session for the council election.
Then, if we get a different result, we can reopen the applications to fill the remaining seats.
As we merged a few more applications yesterday, we only need 2-3 more to reach the target for the election of 11 members.
@HMP, regarding how governance questions are framed, we have made changes based on community feedback. Of course, we cannot make changes AFTER the voting session opens, but we’ve had the questions available a few days to a week before every session starts to allow time for community review.
Is there a way to vote outside of regular governance or on a shorter period?
The main issue is people doing gov are just clicking through to complete and collect their money. The people talking here are the ones more critically dependent on xGov and the council.
There’s obviously a disconnect when retail is flushed out by whales and then are disenfranchised from the gov results. Imo if we put up the same vote for governance without the financial incentive that came with the last round, we’d likely see a different result because without the rewards, it’s only people who care.
The changes sounded like a good idea but since they have begun Algorand has become almost irrelivant. At least when we had a vote there was some kind of interaction.
Now we have nothing
We dont even see what changes are being made or even thought about
Revisiting a governance decision requires a governance vote. Governance Periods will be shorter: two weeks of commitment and two weeks of voting.
The council election shall happen soon to time the results with the release of the xGov platform on mainnet.
I’m interested in seeing how the new governance dynamics will be without the reward seekers.
But keeping it as it is means the little people
Like myself
Have nothing to keep my interest other than the distant hope of making money
Its not even a hobby any more
Can we consider a 1w and 1w schedule instead? Faster is better with this in my opinion and I think the faster turnaround time would be a nice “I see you” to the community.
We’re also seeing reduced activity and TVL since staking rewards went live, so having a 28d+ lockup of funds might compound these more.
This is where I disagree. There was enough feedback with based arguments on why doxxing to the whole world was a bad idea.
And here is where the decentralization theater of xgov is revealed.
I’d rather foundation leaned into the centralized aspects of the whole process instead of waiving our concerns with “this is what was voted on” or similar.
I’m having trouble understanding the change from 11 to 7 members. In the original governance forum post linked to the governance voting, 13 members were proposed:
Additionally, it was previously communicated that the xGov council vote would occur in the Q2 session. Now it appears to have moved to Q3, and as far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a clear discussion on the voting process itself.
For example, what happens if xGov tokens are represented in protocols like Folks (via xALGO), Aramid algo, Reti pools, or Pact v3 LP tokens? These use cases haven’t been addressed or tested publicly to my knowledge. If voting is to be held in July, more clarity would be helpful:
How is the person’s voting power calculated?
Will voters choose one or multiple candidates?
Will votes be public during the voting session?
What mechanisms will be in place to ensure fairness and transparency?
Will this be conducted on-chain?
Another concern I’ve seen raised is that the compensation for council members may be too low, possibly discouraging participation (e.g., from Frugal or Coop). Furthermore, the xGov council currently lacks meaningful authority—it seems more like a symbolic gesture toward decentralization than a body with actual influence.
Reducing the number of council members to 7 seems to contradict the goal of broader decentralization. Coupled with issues like opaque accelerator project selections and large monthly spending (~$3M), it’s understandable that community trust is affected.
Calls to increase network fees or introduce inflation for your budgetary reasons are also concerning without greater transparency, decentralization, and internal adoption of Algorand’s own technologies.
I’m sharing this not to criticize, but in the hope that more open discussion and community involvement can help improve the process.
I can’t find mention of 11 anywhere. If 13 was voted for, any deviation from 13 is essentially concluding the vote doesn’t matter. Something to keep in mind with the Q2 → Q3 delay is the surprisingly low number of candidates.
Transparent documentation on voting power, selection process, mechanism are all good points. I’ve looked at the draft, the prior session and so on and I do not see clear implementations.
@Adri
After reviewing the last thread you sent over, I’m sensing there’s a lack of alignment between the community and AF as to standard of work and scope regarding xGov. I’m asking for community alignment here (smash that heart button please ):
My request is instead a clear scope of what xGov is at present, a straight forward repository to reference measures and your role in it. Otherwise I have to go back through forum posts, when this information should be available in a standard format and given the same grace as the developer docs.
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