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Algorand Governance Reward Distribution Speed

Algorand is a blockchain known for fast transactions, sub 4 seconds, with instant finality. In this post we will review the foundation’s distribution of Governance rewards by transactions per second (TPS) and to see how reward distribution TPS has changed across Governance periods.

Reward Distribution TPS

Governance PeriodDistribution DateEligible GovsTPS
Period 1January 3, 202250,09942.18
Period 2April 5, 202237,22341.97
Period 3July 2, 202235,46628.25
Period 4October 4, 202227,47657.79
Period 5January 6, 202328,69752.78
Period 6April 5, 202322,42642.79
Period 7July 4, 202326,45387.43
Period 8October 4, 2023
Period 9January 5, 2024

Calculating TPS

Governance PeriodStarting BlockStart TimeFinal BlockStop TimeTransactionsTime Difference
Period 11842673204:29:471843809104:49:0248,71619:15
Period 22022741316:49:352022761617:04:2137,18514:46
Period 32197383815:49:152197412616:10:0435,28120:49
Period 42389389115:36:232389401715:44:1827,44907:55
Period 52607910618:21:592607924918:31:0228,66109:03
Period 62815020907:24:352815034907:33:1922,42408:44
Period 73025168013:07:303025175313:11:3721,595*04:07
Period 8
Period 9
*Period 7 was the first period users could become an xGov. Some eligible governors had rewards deposited into a beneficiary account that were distributed outside of the observed transaction calculations.

Please note, my calculations focus on the first distinct wave that accounts for the vast majority of the reward distributions. There is a slight discrepancy between eligible Governors and included transactions in my calculations.

The foundation’s goal has never been to distribute rewards as quickly as possible.

Feel free to check my work by copying the Google spreadsheet below with all the variables.

Foundation Response

Shane, a member of the Algorand Foundation, responded to my reddit post with some great insights on reward distribution TPS.

Unfortunately, the main bottleneck isn’t the blockchain but for all Foundation spending we have third party custodians that essentially need to approve the transactions. So unfortunately we can only be as fast as their API allows. But improvements are being made!

Source

Post Inspiration

Recently the VP of Engineering at Algorand, Gary Malouf, tweeted round times may be reduced with the next consensus upgrade. With the upcoming reward distribution for Governance Period 6, I wanted to see if the foundation will flex Algorand’s capabilities.

Source

Period 6 Calculations

Special thanks to Algorand Observer, which is part of the D13 Collective. They create great content and are invaluable to the Algorand ecosystem. In response to this post they ran the numbers for period 6 distributions, with more granular details.

Current Throughput

The theoretical limit is currently 6,000 transactions per second, stated in the post Algorand Boosts Performance 5x in Latest Upgrade by Noah Grossman on September 15, 2022.

However, on December 26, 2022, Gary Malouf, tweeted.

Source

Which he states as being at least 10k TPS.

With the tremendous and continuous development of Algorand’s superior blockchain technology it’s an exciting time to be involved with the Algorand ecosystem.