xGov Council & Algorand Foundation Meeting – (August 5th, 2026) 
Attendees: xGov Council members & Algorand Foundation representatives, including Marc Vanlerberghe (Algorand Foundation executive) and Fred Estante (Foundation xGov lead)
Overview
This was a milestone meeting. Over the past several months, the xGov Council put together a detailed set of proposals to the Foundation on how the xGov program should evolve: how it’s funded, how much power the council should hold, and how the whole process could become more independent and community-driven. At this meeting, the Foundation came back with its answer, and it was overwhelmingly positive.
Notably, Marc Vanlerberghe joined on behalf of the Foundation’s executive team. His presence signalled that these changes carry buy-in from the very top of the Foundation, not just the team the council works with day to day. The Foundation confirmed it had taken the council’s proposals seriously, discussed them internally across the engineering and executive teams, and agreed to adopt the large majority of them — while adding its own goal of pushing further toward decentralization and community governance.
No formal votes were taken; this was an alignment meeting to confirm direction before the changes are announced publicly. A council-only session on July 22nd laid some of the groundwork covered here.
What the Council Achieved
The Foundation explicitly recognised the work the xGov Council — and the council chair in particular — put into shaping these proposals, and credited that effort as the driving force behind the changes now being adopted. The headline outcomes:
1. A New, More Sustainable Funding Model — Accepted
The council’s proposal to fund the xGov treasury from Algorand node staking rewards has been approved by all relevant parties at the Foundation.
- The Foundation will dedicate roughly 110–120 million ALGO across nodes, with the staking rewards flowing directly into the xGov treasury — well within the range the council proposed.
- This is a meaningful shift toward decentralization: rather than the program depending on a discretionary budget handed out by the Foundation, it becomes increasingly self-funding through staking. The Foundation executive praised this as the right long-term direction.
- It also gives the council something it never had before — a predictable, recurring budget it can plan around, instead of repeatedly going back to the Foundation for top-ups.
- Transfers will start on a roughly bi-weekly manual basis in the early days, with the goal of automating them over time.
- A one-off top-up is also coming to bridge the gap and cover proposals already approved or in progress, with the exact figure to be confirmed shortly.
The Foundation asked that the council stand behind this model publicly when it’s announced, since funding initiatives via staking rewards has drawn community backlash in the past — most notably the World Chess deal. This case is quite different, though. Rather than being a Foundation-driven decision, this model was suggested by the xGov Council itself, specifically as a way to reduce the council’s reliance on the Foundation. Crucially, the rewards from these nodes will flow only to the xGov treasury — meaning the community, through xGov voting, decides how the funds are spent. The council expressed confidence it will be received well precisely because it puts that decision in the community’s hands.
2. More Power for the Council — Accepted
A central theme of the council’s proposals was that meeting the bare Terms and Conditions doesn’t guarantee a proposal actually benefits the ecosystem. The Foundation agreed the council should have a bigger role.
- The council’s proposed quality scorecard for proposals was endorsed and encouraged. The council will design and run it, giving voters a clearer, more objective read on each proposal’s merit — not just a pass/fail on Terms and Conditions.
- The Foundation supported making council votes and individual scorecards more visible to the community, tying into future features that let xGovs delegate their voting power to council members they trust.
- The council was also encouraged to formalise its own internal rules — how it handles conflicts of interest, how it deals with members who go inactive, and so on — and to self-organise these matters publicly rather than routing every small decision through the Foundation.
3. A Path to Real Independence — Accepted in Principle
Perhaps the biggest structural change: the Foundation proposed that the xGov program be administered going forward through the Ecosystem Advisory Council (EAC) rather than the Foundation itself.
- This means that program changes proposed by the xGov Council could be reviewed and signed off by the EAC — a broad, elected representation of the ecosystem — instead of requiring Foundation approval every time.
- For internal council matters (how the council organises itself), the direction is that the council should largely self-regulate. The exact line between what the council decides alone and what needs EAC sign-off will be worked out collaboratively.
- The Foundation framed this as one step in a gradual, deliberate process toward giving the community more autonomy — with more steps to follow. Money-related matters and the legal framework will still involve the Foundation for now, but the trajectory is clearly toward less Foundation involvement over time.
4. Dedicated Development Resources — Coming
A long-standing council frustration has been the lack of engineering resources to actually implement improvements (like decoupling the discussion and voting phases, batch voting, and delegation). The Foundation committed to addressing this.
- A set number of engineering hours per month will be allocated to the xGov Council, funded by the Foundation, with the council itself deciding the development roadmap and priorities.
- The council raised, and the Foundation acknowledged, that a better process for reviewing and merging community contributions is also needed — so that improvements don’t stall waiting on the Foundation.
- Final details are still being confirmed, but the commitment is made.
Council Compensation
The Foundation has begun the process of paying the current (first) council their compensation, drawn from the Foundation treasury rather than the xGov grant pool. Council members will be contacted individually to confirm payment details in the coming weeks.
For future councils, the Foundation and council agreed that compensation should better reflect the reality of the role. The xGov council mandate has evolved well beyond its initial scope — what started as a narrow Terms and Conditions check now involves reviewing every grant proposal in detail, maintaining the scorecard, forming a view on each one, and participating in a growing set of decisions around the program’s direction. It is significantly more demanding than comparable roles such as EAC membership. Accordingly, future council members will be better compensated, but will also be expected to uphold that higher standard — putting in consistent effort evaluating proposals and actively participating in decisions around xGov.
Open Questions Still Being Worked Through
A few items were raised where the Foundation has not yet landed on a position:
- Council voting power from the funding nodes: The council raised the idea that the nodes funding the treasury could actively participate in xGov, with that voting power delegated to the council — helping counterbalance the outsized influence of a few large voters (where a single large staker abstaining can currently stall the whole process). The Foundation agrees the risk is real and worth solving, but wants to think carefully through the game theory and conflict-of-interest safeguards before committing.
- Election structure & conflicts of interest: With several current council members also sitting on the EAC, the Foundation proposed mechanisms to avoid conflicts — such as the council chair automatically holding one EAC community seat, with the other community seats mutually exclusive with a council seat. The council pushed back that strict exclusivity could discourage the ecosystem’s limited pool of active contributors from stepping up. Alternatives (like limiting voting rather than barring dual membership) remain on the table, to be discussed further with the EAC.
- Repository ownership: The question of who ultimately controls merging changes to the xGov platform was raised as a future step in decentralization, but no changes are planned for now.
Timeline & Next Steps
- The Foundation will discuss these changes with the EAC in the coming days, then finalise and announce them publicly.
- The council election application period is tentatively expected to open late the following week, with voting targeted to begin in the last week of August.
- The funding model, treasury top-up figure, and engineering resource details are all expected to be confirmed within days and communicated to the council first, then the wider community.
- The council will continue working with the Foundation to flesh out the details — the legal framework, the EAC relationship, and the development roadmap — as this rolls out in phases.
Groundwork reference: A council-only session on July 22nd, 2026 covered several of the topics that fed into this meeting — including proposal delegation to the council as a fix for voter inactivity, handling of proposals that include Foundation employees as contributors, and the proposed “battle-testing” period requiring code to be open-sourced and stable for a set time before becoming grant-eligible.