Valar improvements to xGov Beta SC: 2025-10 to 2026-01 (xGov Proposal 3450856927)

Governance Discussions xGov Proposals
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Description

Valar Solutions GmbH made multiple improvements to smart contracts of the xGov program of Algorand Foundation during October 2025 and January 2026.
The improvements contribute to increasing program participation, in particular through delegation in the xGov program by enabling decentralized on-chain delegation platforms such as Valar’s xGov Delegation platform.
Delegation platforms simplify participation in the xGov program, improve the user experience, and increase the amount of votes cast, leading to proposals more easily meeting the required quorums and thus projects receiving funding.

The smart contract improvements include:

  • fixing of one previously known and one unknown low-severity bug related to delegation support (PR 314),
  • increasing contract composability by fixing transactions failing and adding missing getters (PR 320),
  • simplifying delegation by improving voting user experience (PR 351), and
  • increasing program clarity and transparency by introducing boycott vote option to differentiate purposeful boycotts from absent users (PR 359).

All improvements include extensive tests and expansions to documentation.
All changes have been reviewed and accepted by the xGov platform maintainers at Algorand Foundation.

About the Team

Valar Solutions GmbH was founded by Dr. Uroš Hudomalj and Dr. Alexander Marinšek after winning Algorand’s Global Hackathon - Change The Game, at Decipher 2024, with the IgoProtect staking platform.
The platform evolved into Valar peer-to-peer staking, which has more than 100M ALGO staked by 350 users that are staking via 100 different node runners that are operating more than 15% of all online accounts.

In addition, the company has developed:

  • Valar’s xGov Delegation platform, which enables xGovs to delegate their voting power to representatives, automatically voting the same way as they - always or only when the xGov forgets to vote on its own.
  • Valar’s Réti UI version with improved xGov support by enabling stakers to express their opinions about xGov proposals and validators to easily vote based on their wishes, as well as quicker load times and better mobile experience.
  • VERA platform for transparent, fair and verifiable random draws.
  • Algorand Decentralization Dashboard, which provides a real-time, easy-to-understand analysis of Algorand decentralization.
  • Certify platform for on-chain credentials for node runners, which won 1st place at Algorand France Hackathon.
  • Block Anxiety - a tool helping to assess your staking performance, which has been integrated e.g. into https://algonoderewards.com/.
  • Block Tracker - a tool for tracking block producers on-chain.

Valar Solutions GmbH is also offering node running services via Valar’s peer-to-peer staking platform and Réti staking pools.
Moreover, it has contributed to Folks Finance audit competitions for their xALGO liquid staking token (1st place), Folks Smart Contract Library (4th place), and their Wormhole NTT integration for Algorand (2nd place).

Dr. Uroš Hudomalj currently serves as a member of the xGov Council and Ecosystem Advisory Council.
He will abstain from voting on this proposal within the xGov Council to prevent conflict of interest.

Additional info

This effort is in-line Valar’s mission to increase decentralization of Algorand.
Two crucial aspects of this are consensus participation (i.e. staking) and governance.
The developed improvements directly contribute to the latter while also opening the doors for novel combinations of the two.

Valar’s contributions to the xGov smart contracts implementations are the only community contributions, i.e. not from Algorand Foundation employees, to the smart contracts.

Adoption Metrics

xGov smart contracts with the introduced improvements have processed:

  • +700 votes cast
  • 7 proposals voted on
  • 384k ALGO distributed
  • 1 delegation platform with 1M ALGO voting power and +10 users

This proposal requests 59,999 ALGO in retroactive funding to cover the completed development.

Link to proposal: Valar improvements to xGov Beta SC: 2025-10 to 2026-01

Happy to answer any questions and hear any feedback on delegation in xGov!

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I think this is important when we are pruning inactive xGov members so thank you for the contribution.

Valar’s contributions to the xGov smart contracts implementations are the only community contributions, i.e. not from Algorand Foundation employees, to the smart contracts.

I hope this encourages more community members to submit PRs to xGov repos and then seeking retro funding. I fully support this approach/initiative/behavior, as it creates a healthy check and balance with the Algorand Foundation

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Thank you for your support!

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@uhudo worth mentioning the bug contribution was awarded a bounty payment of 15,000 Algo.

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Thanks @Adri! We didn’t mention that finding of the previously unknown low-severity vulnerability was awarded the 15k ALGO bug bounty because we have not received approval for public release of this info by Algorand Foundation up to now. We will update the proposal accordingly!

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I thought that was before the fix was implemented. Let me double check with legal.

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Another easy yes. Also if you are xgov but don’t wish to constantly look if there are new proposals to vote on - i highly recommend valars delegation platform as a failsafe in case you forget to vote.

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I love the delegation platform. We should give it more exposure.

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Thanks! We’re open to ideas on how to increase its exposure.