xGov Council meeting #5

[simonb]

*This AI-generated summary covers xGov Council meetings, which are unofficial and independently organized by the council. It offers a transparent view of their work and initiatives to enhance the xGov program. These notes are provided as-is, and it’s understood that some topics may not be fully clear without prior context.

5*th council meeting Nov 12^th 2025

Progress Review

Quorum Changes and Proposal Voting

• Algorand Foundation proposed lowering quorum participation thresholds: Big projects to 50%, Medium projects to 40%, Small projects to 30%.

• The current 70% quorum is seen as excessively high, acting as a barrier to passing proposals. While lowering it may be necessary, doing so merely masks the underlying issue.

• Big projects face funding starvation due to stringent quorum and vote thresholds; maximum funding grants decreased drastically from $250,000 in 2021-22 to about $36,000 currently.

• Smaller projects and maintenance funding possibilities considered but limited future demand unless new projects like Lute or Defly open source and apply.

• Foundation cycles for proposals and votes are slow, impacting timely funding.

• Discussions on delegations and notifications to improve voter engagement ongoing with smart contract-level framework for Reti and Valar mostly ready but XGov front end remains closed source.

Inactive XGov Members and Membership Refresh

• Consensus among council members to aggressively kick out inactive XGov members who have not voted during current cycles.

• Proposed solutions include ‘vacation mode,’ delegation options allowing voters to assign votes for inactive periods, and requiring participants to re-enroll to refresh the active roster.

• Manual and off-chain updating of committee membership based on blockchain activity is a limiting factor.

• A suggestion to remove only those who never voted rather than a full reset to reduce friction with active voters and prevent XGov downtime.

Notifications and Voting Cadence

• Notifications by on-chain notes are possible but limited; privacy and scalability concerns raised regarding intensive notification chasing based on social media or wallet linking.

• Email notifications are an additional channel by nfd lookup or by introducing subscribe mailing list on XGov portal.

• The Foundation’s current notification strategy seen as insufficient; Council advocate for clear, predictable, and possibly monthly voting windows to improve participation.

• Monthly or batch voting cycles proposed to ease burden on voters and improve marketing and voter focus.

• Council members suggest that Foundation takes a leading role in voter notification and public outreach, including amplifying messages via social media channels.

Potential Abuse of the System & Terms & Conditions Considerations

• Concerns raised about possible gaming of the system by multiple accounts controlled by the same entity to request multiple small grants.

• The council acknowledged existing terms and conditions prohibit manipulation but emphasized potential risks and the importance of council veto powers.

• KYC requirements may limit abuse but adversaries could still use different persons/accounts.

• The current system is seen as kindergarten-level in scale and does not effectively prevent token vote concentration issues inherited by PoS.

Challenges and Pivots

Quorum & Funding Challenge

• The foundational challenge is balancing quorum thresholds to make funding accessible without enabling whales to dominate governance.

• Current cycles of proposal discussion and voting combined with any modifications to the XGov platform requiring no active proposals threaten project survival and discourage recurrent funding requests in case of rejection.

• The pivot is to favor lowering quorum on big projects but cautious approach on small and medium, focusing on community backing.

Inactivity and Membership Management

• The difficulty exists in encouraging voting participation and sanctions for inactivity due to tedious manual involvement and privacy issues; delegation has technical and opt-in barriers.

• Manual updates of committee membership and infrequency create flexibility challenges.

• Foundation’s risk-averse stance contrasts with council’s inclination for stricter enforcement, including kicking inactive voters to clear governance roll.

• Some members urged against resetting all participants, preferring clearance of only non-voters to minimize disruption.

Notification and User Engagement

• Current notifications insufficient in activating users; social media chase inefficient and privacy sensitive.

• Foundation reticence to overburden users with notifications; potential pivot to more traditional channels like email subscriptions suggested.

• Batching proposals for monthly voting cycles preferred to optimize user workflow and Foundation communication capabilities.

• There is concern about system design focusing more on Foundation convenience than user experience, calling for a user-centric pivot.

Potential System Gaming and Lacking Safeguards

• The system faces threats from multiple account creation to game vote-based funding, potentially enabling ‘free money’ scenarios.

• While terms include anti-manipulation clauses, proving bad faith and acting on it is challenging and risks legitimate projects.

• Council’s role as veto authority highlighted as a potential countermeasure, but its powers may be limited.

Upcoming milestones

Foundation Operations and Governance

• Push for resetting inactive XGov participants who failed to vote, possibly after delegation options are deployed.

Proposal & Voting Process Improvements

• Submit formal recommendation for monthly proposal batching and voting cycles to improve predictability and voter engagement.

• Develop and advocate for improved notification mechanisms, including potential email subscriptions and amplification of official Foundation announcements via social media.

Communication and Community Engagement

• Share meeting recaps using AI-based summarization tool to increase accessibility of council discussions.

• Publicize council stance and encourage community visibility and support.

Technical and Contract Level Improvements

• Continue smart contract implementation of delegation features and front-end interface improvements, noting challenges due to closed-source front end.

• Explore options for automated or user-initiated sign-up refresh processes to clean up inactive participation on chain.

Action items

• Share AI-generated meeting recaps on the forums for current and past meetings to improve community transparency and engagement

• Coordinate scheduling of next council meeting to accommodate council members’ availability

• Confirm voter inactivity period appropriate for removing non-voting participants (e.g., 3-4 weeks) and communicate council position clearly

• Take strong stance on kicking out inactive voters and push for implementing time-bound voting requirements

• Push forward deployment/testing of delegation smart contract features and collaborate on front-end display plans

• Assist in planning user re-enrollment process and communicate its implications to affected users and tech teams

• Take strong stance for batching votes on monthly cadence and assist Foundation in implementing these changes for smoother proposal processes

• Work on simplifying user workflow for voting to build higher engagement rates