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 of xGov council to enhance the xGov program. These notes are provided as-is, and it’s to be understood that some topics may not be fully clear without prior context.
xGov Council Meeting – (April 1st 2026) 
Attendees: xGov Council members
Overview
This council-only meeting was primarily a free-form discussion covering the current state of the xGov program in the wake of recent Algorand Foundation leadership changes. Topics ranged from immediate operational concerns — the need for a new xGov committee and low participation in the latest proposal batch — to longer-term structural questions about how the council and xGov voting should be reformed. No formal votes or decisions were taken; the session was exploratory and discursive in nature.
Key Topics Discussed
1. AF Leadership Transition & xGov Continuity
The meeting opened with a discussion of the recent Algorand Foundation restructuring, including significant staffing changes and a shift in who holds responsibility for the xGov programme. Participants noted that responsibility has moved to new leadership within the Foundation, and that an informal signal received via a separate conversation indicated that no official internal direction had yet been set for xGov’s future role.
Key points discussed:
- The Foundation has not made any official public statement about xGov’s future direction following the leadership change.
- A xGov Council proposal for sustainable funding of the xGov treasury via node rewards was officially submitted to Foundation leadership just prior to the transition; its status is now uncertain.
- The council flagged that a new xGov committee will need to be formally created in approximately one to two weeks(60m block produced), and that this process is not yet automatic — someone at the Foundation needs to act on it.
2. xGov Proposal Activity & Participation
The latest batch of xGov proposals saw very poor participation, with only around 80 xGovs voting on any given proposal against an eligible pool of ~160. Most proposals failed to reach quorum.
Key points discussed:
- Participation is estimated at roughly 50% at best, with many xGov members effectively inactive (“missing in action”).
- Any proposal requesting over 50,000 ALGO has essentially no chance of passing under the current quorum conditions.
- The council discussed encouraging active proposers to withdraw or wait and resubmit after a new committee is created, to give proposals a better chance. This was framed as a suggestion rather than a directive — individual proposers remain free to decide for themselves.
- Smaller proposals (under 100k ALGO) may still be able to pass in the current cycle, while larger ones (e.g. 100k+) were considered unlikely to succeed.
- The xGov treasury was noted to be near depletion: an informal tally of plausible-to-pass proposals from the current batch would bring the balance into negative territory, underlining the need for a Foundation top-up in the next month.
3. xGov Committee Automation & Technical Work
Discussion touched on ongoing technical development on the xGov committee formation code.
Key points discussed:
- A pull request related to automating committee creation has already been merged into the relevant repository.
- At least two developers appear to be actively committing to the codebase on a regular basis.
- Whether automated committee creation will be live for the upcoming (60th million block) transition or remain a future feature was unclear at the time of the meeting. (EDIT: this was later confirmed by AF as the actual plan.)
- The council noted a need to reach out directly to Foundation technical contacts for clarity on what to expect and when.
4. xGov Sybil Resistance & Voting Integrity
As xGov membership numbers shrink, concern was raised about the vulnerability of a smaller quorum to manipulation.
Key points discussed:
- With fewer active xGovs, the cost of spinning up multiple accounts to gain outsized influence over quorum decisions decreases significantly.
- The minimum stake to become an xGov is low enough that a motivated actor could enrol a large number of accounts in a single day by rotating stake across wallets.
- Possible mitigations discussed informally included filtering out accounts with very low current balances or those no longer actively producing blocks, though it was acknowledged these could also be gamed.
- The council recognises that a smaller but genuinely active and engaged xGov body is preferable to a larger but largely inactive or uninvolved one — quality of participation matters more than raw headcount.
- The council agreed to raise sybil risk concerns with Foundation technical contacts and gather input on how automated committee creation might address — or inadvertently worsen — these risks.
5. Structural Reform of xGov Voting and the Council’s Role
A substantial portion of the meeting was devoted to broader questions about whether the xGov structure should be reformed, and what role the (next elected) council should play.
Key points discussed:
- On xGov participation quality: Concern was raised that many xGov voters lack the technical context to meaningfully evaluate proposals, and that votes can be influenced by hype, personal biases, or community dynamics rather than project merit.
- On the council’s de facto role: Multiple participants acknowledged that in practice, the council’s recommendations (via platforms like Pact/Folks) heavily influence how the broader xGov membership votes, meaning the council is already the effective decision-making body, even if that’s not the formal design.
- Delegated council model: A proposal emerged that xGovs should elect the council, and the council should then be the sole body that approves or rejects funding — removing the broader xGov vote from the funding decision. This was seen as more honest take about how the system currently works in practice, and potentially a lot more agile and more accountable.
- Voting on amounts, not just yes/no: It was discussed wheather a reformed council should be able to vote on the amount of funding rather than a binary yes/no, giving more flexibility in rewarding partial work or under-scoped proposals.
- Retroactive funding and amount adjustment: The ability to modify the actual funds awarded pairs well with a retroactive-only funding requirement, where work has already been completed and value can be objectively and fairly evaluated by a competent body (xgov council). However, concern was raised about the overhead this would place on the council for smaller proposals. As an alternative discussed in previous sessions, a maximum percentage adjustment on the requested amount — for example, ±20% — was suggested as a more practical approach to amount flexibility without requiring full in-depth re-evaluation of every ask.
- Transparency and accountability: Strong support for making all council votes publicly traceable (some tooling already exists for this via community dashboards), and for implementing penalties for council members who fail to participate consistently — including automatic replacement by reserve candidates.
- Council size: If the council takes on a broader funding mandate, some participants suggested expanding its size to reduce the impact of individual abstentions and improve coverage across time zones. A counter argument was raised, however, that organising and managing even the current 11 council members is already a demanding task — suggesting that simply adding more members may not be the most effective path forward.
- Compensation: If council responsibilities grow materially, the current arrangement — essentially uncompensated volunteer work — would need revisiting. Modest per-member compensation from the xGov treasury was floated as a possibility. The council acknowledged that many current members are already doing significantly more than the official xGov scope requires, and that this elevated level of engagement should be recognised as the expected norm for future council members.
No formal proposal emerged from this discussion; participants agreed the ideas warranted being written up and surfaced to Foundation leadership.
6. Proposal Batching and Voting Cadence
The current system of rolling, ad hoc voting periods was criticised for making it difficult for voters — and pools — to stay engaged.
Key points discussed:
- The original complaint with the quarterly xGov pilot was that three months was too long, but the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, creating an unpredictable and fragmented schedule.
- A simple monthly cadence was seen as a practical middle ground that would have addressed the original concern without the complexity of the current system.
- The council discussed encouraging proposers to coordinate their submission timing around the next committee creation, so that multiple proposals open within the same window — effectively creating a de facto monthly cycle without requiring the platform to enforce it.
Outcomes and Next Steps
The following action items and priorities were identified, though no formal decisions were taken:
- Reach out to Foundation technical contacts to clarify the timeline and scope of xGov committee automation, and understand what to expect at the next milestone block.
- Follow up with new Foundation leadership on the status of the node-funded xGov treasury proposal, and to open a conversation about next steps for the xGov programme under the new leadership structure.
- Encourage proposers informally to consider waiting until a new committee is created before entering the voting phase, particularly for larger proposals with no realistic path to quorum under current conditions.
- Write up structural reform ideas — including the delegated council model, amount-based voting, and accountability mechanisms — as a written proposal to be shared with Foundation leadership.
- Flag sybil risk to Foundation contacts as an input to committee automation design.
- Reschedule the next joint council/AF meeting to a later time slot to improve attendance.
Note: This meeting did not include Algorand Foundation representatives. A portion of post-meeting discussion may have occurred outside the recorded session.