The Algorand Foundation had a webinar today!

For those unaware, the Algorand Foundation had an "all-hands" webinar where they laid out plans for the future of ALGO! Posting on behalf of /u/Username-314159, who's original post can be found here. A copy of the presentation slides can be viewed here. Lastly, a video of the presentation can be viewed here! Super-awesome stuff coming out of this project!

First, it was a great presentation that demonstrated the high level of professionalism, thoughtfulness and community focus of the Algorand Foundation team, amazing work! Also, everything I learned leads me to conclude I need to buy even more Algo to participate and benefit more from the coming governance changes, they are very positive for token holders imo.

Here are the highlights that stood out most to me:

• Algorand considers Token Holders to be a central participant and constituent in the community (i.e. holders won’t be left in the lurch, we’ll play a critical role in decision making including on things like how to distribute transaction fees in the future!)

• The 6%-7% apy participation rewards will start to phase out and be completely gone in 2022, they’ll be replaced by governance rewards

• 1 Algo represents 1 vote in governance decisions and anyone can use their tokens to vote directly (or they can delegate their tokens to others to vote on their behalf)

• When you vote your tokens they get locked for 90 days, at the end of the 90 days you’ll get your reward. If you exit early you’ll lose reward. However you’re never putting your tokens at risk of slashing, only at risk of not getting your reward if you don’t keep your voting tokens locked in during the governance period.

• The size of governance rewards can get VERY attractive, depending on how many tokens participate in the 90 day voting cycle. If only 1 billion participate each voting locked token will earn ~30% apy for the period!! If 4 billion participate its 7.7% apy, still pretty good.

• The mechanics of voting work like this. At the beginning of the period there will be a 5 day period where token holders decide to commit or not commit to governance during the period. Then you will need to either vote your tokens or delegate them to another for voting. If you don’t vote you’re not participating and therefore not earning rewards.

• We’ll be able to vote on proposals through a mechanism provided by the foundation, integrated with the Algorand wallet. For those holding on exchanges/ custodians Algorand is working with them and they will likely provide some mechanism to participate through their platforms (they’ll likely take a cut though of the rewards would be my guess).

• The Algorand foundation will curate and present governance proposals but will not participate itself. This means the rest of us really do get to decide how to direct the future of the project.

So those are my takeaways. I also want to share that the way the foundation is approaching governance is really community focused. I’m very excited to participate, for the rewards but also to help keep Algorand the best blockchain project in the world that everyone will want to build on and participate in!