xGov process : Proposed flow for OSS after approval

Governance Discussions
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Expected Flow: Open-Sourcing After Proposal Approval

— In short: OSS after approval creates a predictable, enforceable, and fast path to fund proven projects under current constraints, while keeping open the door to a broader redesign where OSS is encouraged, not mandatory.

1. Clear OSS Commitment in Proposal & T&C

  • Proposals must explicitly state what will be open-sourced , under which license , and at what stage (e.g. full repo, specific components, frontend only, etc.).

  • The T&Cs should require either:

  • the project is already open source, or

    • the proposer contractually agrees to open-source after approval but before funding is finalized .

  • This avoids surprises and anchors OSS as an enforceable condition rather than an informal expectation.

2. Conditional Approval & Council Oversight

  • A proposal may pass community voting with OSS as a post-approval condition .

  • The xGov Council retains the ability to:

  • confirm compliance,

    • block or delay funding, or
    • reject the proposal post-approval if OSS commitments are not met as specified.

  • This preserves Council veto power as a quality and value backstop.

3. Defined OSS Delivery Window

  • Once approved, the proposer enters a time-boxed OSS resolution period :

  • Target: 2–4 weeks to publish the agreed code.

    • Grace period: 1–2 additional weeks to respond to Council (and community) feedback or requests for clarification.

  • Extensions are possible but must be explicitly granted by the Council.

4. Verification & Review

  • Verification focuses on compliance with what was promised , not exhaustive code quality review:

  • Repo exists and is accessible.

    • Scope matches proposal description.
    • License is appropriate and explicit.

  • Any concerns (missing components, unclear structure, licensing issues) are handled transparently in the proposal’s forum thread.

5. Funding Release or Rejection

  • If OSS conditions are met → funding proceeds.
  • If conditions are unmet, misleading, or materially deviate from the proposal → Council may block or revoke funding (This will result in the slashing of anti-spam deposit!).
  • In practice, this mirrors the current evaluation flow, but shifts OSS validation to after approval , reducing friction for proven projects who stand to lose their commercial/competitive edge by opensourcing.

6. Scope Limitation to Reduce Abuse

  • OSS-after-approval should apply selectively (e.g. large asks, established teams, multi-year ecosystem contributors, proven usage/metrics).
  • Prior communication with council is encouraged, as council will provide a NOTE that will reflect their individual support, but not the TnC compliance.
  • example:

Proposal will be opensourced and TnC will be evaluated only if it gets approved.
Council support for the proposal (based on quality, ask amount and other variables): X yes / X no / X abstain votes.

  • This limits spam and avoids incentivizing low-value “OSS slop” submissions.

Lower-Priority but Tangible Push: Removing the OSS Requirement Entirely

  • There is growing consensus that mandatory OSS is a blunt instrument :

  • It incentivizes low-value repositories over real ecosystem impact.

    • It blocks high-value, low-margin projects (e.g. wallets, infra, services) that deliver adoption but capture little profit.

  • OSS should be treated as a value multiplier , not a binary gate:

  • Example framing: OSS may justify higher funding, but closed-source projects can still be fundable if value is clear and proven.

  • The current “OSS after approval” model is widely seen as a workaround , not an end state.

  • A next-step discussion (separate from immediate T&C changes) would define:

  • when closed-source proposals are acceptable,

    • what alternative “skin in the game” looks like (metrics, usage, commitments, phased funding),
    • and how Council discretion replaces rigid OSS rules.

  • The near-term goal is predictability and funding flow; the medium-term goal is realigning xGov incentives around delivered value, not repo status .

This is the first iteration of the flow, but feel free to comment with any feedback

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Thanks @simonb. I’m keen to test out the OSS after approval (OSSAA) methodology once proposals reopen. We would love to hear proposers feedback on this change too.

Regarding funding private projects, we are open to discussing it. I heard some pro opinions, but they are, of course, argued by those with vested interest. I’d love to see the broader community input on this.

[xGov][Beta] Becoming a Proposer and Creating Proposals
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I prefer If other people beside me also build the open source projects from the start.. This change will incentivize people to build closed source and when they will see chance the close down the business by open sourcing the core business logic and get the financial injection from xgov they will apply for the xgov grant.

If you want to incentivize people to build closed source apps go on and approve this. If you want to incentivize open source solutions where devs and coding agents will have broader code to learn from i suggest we keep the model the same - requirement to be open source before the proposal is set.

Open sourcing from the start will also boost the algorand dev activity in the global crypto builders metrics. Allowing people to build useful stuff and request change to open sourcing it for approved money will reduce the dev stats for algo ecosystem.

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Fair point, i personally see things a lot differently as the proposals are all retroactive in nature thus asking for funds for value delivered. The oss is just a nice to have, a sort of a guarantee that something is left to the ecosystem if project winds down.

The ongoing debate within xgov council is about “value delivered” and agreement is that ecosystem can get big value from closed source projects. Our most frequent example is lute wallet or even defly wallet. Would you agree ecosytem benefits big time from fhem being available for users, despites their closed source? Keep in mind pera is funded by algorand foundation to an extent of 300k usd/quarter… yet these other wallets need to compete with pera for users and market share. If they are willing to open source in order to get some miniscule amount of funds what does it matter if it was built as closed source first?

Obv if algorand userbase was bigger and there were other funding options this could be a different story, but reality is it’s nearly inpossible to have a product generating enough revenue to to support its operations and growth within algorand for years now. (Obv there are exceptions such as alpha arcade, but its a one example.in entire ecosystem…)

I’ll give you another example: remember nftexplorer- wouldn’t it be great if they could get an injection of funds via xgov and open source their platform… it would still be around probably, that was a big hit for the eco when it happened, then asalytic picked up their torch now they are in same position… my point is, if there is value to ecosystem - xgovs should decide, if they wish to support a prject/product, they wont support things they dont find value in… not some ideology about oss first, mandatory oss etc…

This is a very small change, that has very little downside for exploitation imo (as end result is the same - oss product funded by xgov) and lets be fair - we’ve seen it happen already within current xgov framework: folks oss their library, pact oss their cclp, asastats example and more - any means of funding are most needed rn, if we are to keep these builders around, and they are imo a lot more valuable than some nieche oss code that prolly noone uses but it sounds fancy as a prof of concept etc… i would personally much rather support things that have provenly provided value over the years and keep doing so(this is not aimed at anyone to be clear, but just trying to paint the picture)

Again this are my personal views.

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actually I do not agree with this. all your metrics about successfull projects are derived from information weather the Algorand Foundation is promoting the project or not..

AF has injected money into defly, is heavily injecting money into pera, while other existing wallets like Biatec wallet does not get any support (only small amounts through the public grants i get slashed for). Let me remind you the story of the Biatec Wallet.. Long time ago there was no open source algorand wallet out there, and on this very forum i asked when it was going to be open sourced, but i got response that it is on the roadmap. Then i asked that please open source it i want to help it translate it to my language, and they stated some date. After month after this date I asked them again and they said it is on the roadmap. So I built the first open source wallet backed then called AWallet and released it to mainnet and it had features which I believed was crucial for the ecosystem like multisig support or rekeying. One week after I published it, the Algorand wallet went open source. I did translate it to slovak and of course they did not merged the pull request because they published it in the way that just mirrored the git to public repo and did not accepted public contributions. I also requested the algorand inc and af to start promoting it, but they invested heavily into the product that they did not want to do a competition for it. Something like 2 years after registration i got info from the algorand inc that they appologize that they did not list the AWallet to the list and if I still want to add it to the list, so it got to the list of the ecosystem directory at the inc. However with the war between the AF and Inc this directory was disclosed after short time. AF is still not promoting the Biatec wallet at the entry point for users. Yet it support ledger, multisig, it allows multiple dex aggregators to fetch quote at once and user compare them, it is the only wallet which has arc76 support, wallet does not track the user activity, it is the only wallet which supports 2FA algorand accounts, it is the only wallet which supports to split the algo25 mnemonic into shamir shards and more..

And here we come and you mention again Lute as the one of the best wallets out there even if it has like 20% of features that the Biatec Wallet has. The best tech probably does not win all the time, and we have to get used to this in algorand ecosystem.

And btw i think defly should be open sourced long time ago when they got a lot of money from the foundation. I am not aware how lute is making money, but I would not trust the closed source self custody wallet in the first place, and if AF is promoting them i feel something scatchy there..

This xGov funding seems to me that the group of people who pronounce their products of the highest value added and gets the marketing support from the foundation wants to drain the algos from the AF while it has some. MG showed the character with the .net grant proposal and does not want to let others then your closed group to get a share from it even though the expansion of algorand to microsoft world would be epic (i assume he does not like that i created biatec mcp server for algorand). The rules of xGovs here that allowed that single entity has over 85% of votes is astonishing while i was telling Adri this at last decipher that this will happen and you were just laughing on me there. So folks denied my request even though the majority of voters voted in favor, and most of the xGov council did not vote. I understand few no votes in the xGov council for anything I propose as there are my competitors and they do not want me to get the funds to build faster. But what i think Michele said on the last algorand communicy call that the xGovs strongly voted against this proposal is just a lie. Instead of letting the technical question be answered by technical people to promote that some work has been done there and we are ready for microsoft world to step in to algorand he chose to undermine the c# devs.

So I ask, when will AF start promoting my products? For example the first concentrated liquidity AMM on Algorand is huge thing, decentralized scheduler which allows self custody periodic onchain painments or any smart contract executions is also huge, algorand explorer with correct defi info and prices is important, aramid bridge which allows bridging btc from base or arbitrum is also important yet AF heavily promotes others.

I agree that projects here in algorand ecosystem are underfinanced which probably lead to the recent compx hack, but the algorand foundation or the closed group of projects who do not let competitors to step in to the ecosystem are doing terrible decision making. We were underfinanced for years, and if someone is building closed source apps that are not sustainable and then request the funding for open sourcing them it is not good for the ecosystem. It would be better if they start open source, and if their infrastructure costs go above what they earn they just close and new competition rise. The injection of money to recover the project for short time will not help.

AF should promote the competition between the open source projects not picking the winners who then publish .env file to the git.

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Xgov is trying to do things differently than af…thats the whole point. We can agree that af was and is playing favourites in the ecosystem, and the landscape of algorand ecosystem as is is in big part due to that. If af doesn’t promote your products thats between tou and the foundation (it took me 3years to get cosmic champs listed on af website under ecosystem, all while it was top asa by tvl and the biggest gaming community in the eco… so yes i know a bit about being ignored)

Accordinf to latest trasparency report there was 1.9milion usd +1.1 million algo allocated to “ecosystem support” in q4. Yet somehow not a single developer i know in the ecosystem got anything from that bucket… so yes i advocate to support any developer applying to get funds through xgov regardless of the type of their project or theor origin, as ling as value is there, so is my personal support - because at the end of the day xgovs vote to support proposal or not. Not the council, not the af, but xgovs.

I agree about misinformation about your proposal being majorly downvoted, that was not accurately stated imo - but it could be interpreted as such if you look at absolute numbers(folks being absolute majority vote).

Edit: i am not aware you are applying to get a xgov grant for awallet, should you do so i would support it obv. I personally do not use awallet, i do use pera defly and lute, i know lute was thinking on going opensource thats why i gave that example. Everyone experienec in ecosystem is different, and everyone has a voice imo.

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