Algorand Foundation Drops Plan to Lift ALGO Supply Cap, Pauses Project King Safety

The Algorand Foundation has indefinitely paused Project King Safety, shelving a planned overhaul of the Algorand network's fee and rewards model for ALGO. Proposals to raise the token's supply cap, lift the minimum transaction fee, and capture MEV (maximal extractable value) are no longer under consideration, while staking rewards will remain in place through January 2028.

The update was delivered in a community post from the Foundation's official X account, @AlgoFoundation.

About Algorand

Algorand is a layer-1 blockchain that runs on a pure proof-of-stake consensus protocol. It was founded by Silvio Micali, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist and Turing Award winner, and its mainnet launched in 2019. ALGO, the network's native token, has carried a fixed supply cap of 10 billion tokens, which made the proposal to raise that ceiling a focal point of the debate. With the proposal shelved, the ceiling stays at 10 billion, leaving the token's maximum possible circulation unchanged. The network's staking rewards program, which pays participants who stake ALGO, was introduced at the end of 2024.

What Changes for Algorand Governance and Grants

Alongside the pause, the Foundation is scaling back several community and governance functions. Staking support is unaffected, so rewards participants now have a confirmed timeline through January 2028. The Foundation has also left the door open to adopting new fee models down the line, keeping fee design a live topic for future community discussion.

Why the Supply Cap Question Mattered

The supply cap had been a sensitive issue for ALGO holders, since lifting it would expand the maximum number of tokens that could ever circulate. An analysis of the plan highlighted those concerns and noted that Project King Safety had first been discussed in 2025 as a way to fund network security once the staking bonus ends.

With the project now cancelled, how the network will pay for security beyond that date remains an open question, with the Foundation pointing to usage-based revenue as its preferred direction. Layer-1 networks typically fund security through some combination of token issuance and transaction activity, and the Foundation's stated preference signals fees tied to network usage as the route it wants to take.

New Leadership Sets a Self-Sustaining Goal

The decision follows a change at the top of the Foundation, whose new leadership has set a self-sustaining network as its goal. The organization has also been under cost pressure. From here, the markers to watch are the January 2028 expiry of the staking rewards window, any future fee-model proposals, and how usage-based revenue takes shape as the Foundation's stated path to covering security costs.