On 29 July 2026, ALGO closed at $0.0775, lower than ever before. Since its first trading day in June 2019, the token has lost 96.4 percent, while bitcoin gained 723 percent over the same period. Then came September: up 44.7 percent in a single month.
If you are thinking about buying now, you quickly run into a second argument besides the price. Since January 2025, staking ALGO pays rewards of roughly 5 percent a year. That sounds like a network paying its participants.
Before you put that into your calculation, one question is worth asking: where does this money actually come from? From the fees users pay? Or from somewhere else?
What Algorand does: blocks by lottery
Algorand is a blockchain of its own, running since June 2019. It was developed by the company Algorand Inc., founded by Silvio Micali. Since March 2026, development has been in the hands of the Algorand Foundation, the foundation behind the network.
The method is called pure proof of stake. It works like this: anyone who holds ALGO and is online takes part in a kind of lottery. For every block, the draw decides who may propose it and who votes on it in a small committee. The more ALGO someone holds, the bigger their chance of being drawn.
On average, a new block arrives every 2.75 seconds. In 2019 it was about 4.4 seconds.
So much for the principle. But what sets Algorand apart from other chains?
What makes Algorand special: final at once
A block on Algorand is final as soon as the committee has certified it. A payment can no longer be reversed after that, according to the documentation "without the possibility of forks". On Ethereum, it takes about 12.8 minutes for a block to count as final. On Algorand, it takes under 3 seconds.
Then there is the name behind it. In 2012, Silvio Micali won the Turing Award together with Shafi Goldwasser, the most important prize in computer science. For a crypto project, that is an unusually strong founder.
On the technical side, what was announced has also been delivered:
- Smart contracts have been running since August 2020.
- State proofs since September 2022: compact proofs that let other systems check Algorand's state.
- Post-quantum accounts since 22 August 2026: accounts signed with the Falcon-1024 scheme, meant to hold up against future quantum computers too.
A scan of block times since 2019 finds no main-network outage longer than 30 minutes.
If the story ended here, Algorand would deserve its reputation.
The technology delivers what it promises.
Which leaves the question of who actually uses this technology, and for what.
Who uses Algorand: many transactions, few senders
At first glance, usage looks good. In the 30 days from 12 September to 11 October 2026, Algorand processed 1.13 million transactions a day. That is more than NEAR or Avalanche.
| Chain | Transactions per day | Fees per day |
|---|---|---|
| Algorand | 1,133,977 | $142 |
| NEAR | 865,015 | $5,996 |
| Avalanche C-Chain | 482,328 | $14,561 |
12 Sep–11 Oct 2026. Algorand via the chain's own counters, fees from a sample of 2,000 blocks; NEAR and Avalanche via their own statistics interfaces.
On transactions, Algorand is ahead. On what gets paid for them, it is far behind: $142 a day, about a hundredth of what Avalanche takes in.
Who sends all these transactions? A sample of 200 random blocks shows:
- 45 senders account for 82.1 percent of all transactions. Each of them sends at least 1,500 transactions a day, extrapolated. No person does that by hand.
- 19.3 percent are entries that store chess rankings on the chain: transfers of zero ALGO to oneself, with players and ratings attached. Who runs this could not be determined.
- 6.7 percent come from the so-called "mining" of the token Orange (ORA), which is a single app.
The record days look the same. On 1 January 2024 there were 44.48 million transactions, more than on any day before or since. 97.6 percent of them came from the Orange app. On 13 June 2024 there were 27.28 million, 86.8 percent of them from a single sender.
The money working on the chain has shrunk too:
| today | peak | |
|---|---|---|
| Deposited in DeFi applications (TVL) | $38.4m | $319.1m (10 Feb 2024) |
| Stablecoins | $69.6m | $430.7m (24 May 2022) |
DefiLlama, 12 Oct 2026.
The platform rwa.xyz lists $55.8 million in tokenized securities on Algorand. That is exactly one asset: the share of the wallet company Exodus.
On Algorand, the transaction count says little. What counts is the $142 in fees per day.
And those fees are exactly where you would expect the staking yield to come from. Are they enough?
The core: the foundation pays the yield, not the network
Since 23 January 2025, Algorand has had so-called consensus incentives. Anyone who holds at least 30,000 ALGO and is online with their own node gets a reward when they propose a block. The reward has two parts: half of the fees in that block and a fixed bonus, currently 8.26 ALGO per block.
This is how much was paid out, compared with what users pay:
| 30 days, 12 Sep–11 Oct 2026 | ALGO |
|---|---|
| paid out to stakers | 6.54m |
| paid in fees by users | 37,898 |
Annualized, that is about 79.6 million ALGO for stakers and about 0.46 million ALGO in fees. For every ALGO the network takes in, about 170 ALGO go out in rewards.
Where does the difference come from? The answer is in Algorand's own documentation. Payouts come from a pot called the fee sink, and the foundation fills it. The bonus is "unsustainable from protocol fees". The foundation will top up the pot "for several years".
For how long exactly? The foundation's staking FAQ says "approximately 24 months" from the start. That would be around January 2027. What comes after has not been announced.
The program has worked all the same. The stake taking part in consensus rose from 1,256 million ALGO at the start in January 2025 to 2,026 million in October 2026, an increase of about 60 percent. Just under a fifth of it, 19.4 percent, is the foundation's own stake, though.
The difference from other staking models matters. On many chains, rewards come from newly created tokens, so the yield dilutes all holders. Not on Algorand: all 10 billion ALGO have existed since the first block. The reward is a transfer from the foundation's holdings, with an expiry date.
The 5 percent is not income from usage. It is a subsidy with an expiry date.
But is that a problem as long as the foundation has enough ALGO?
The obvious objection
"The foundation holds over a billion ALGO. At 80 million a year, that lasts a long time."
Arithmetically, that is true. At the end of June 2026, the foundation held 1,036 million ALGO. At 79.6 million a year, that would last about 13 years.
But the foundation has not committed to any of that. The commitment covers about 24 months, and there is no published plan for the time after. A new fee and incentive model called "Project King Safety" was announced for the fourth quarter of 2025. According to the forum, it was postponed in April 2026 and has not been published to date.
And the foundation's holdings shrink for a second reason: it sells.
Whether the subsidy continues is up to the foundation, not the network.
How much does it sell, and when?
Tokenomics: who holds ALGO and who sells
The basic numbers are simple. There are at most 10 billion ALGO, and all of them were created in the first block. No new ones are added, and nothing is burned either: fees go into the fee sink, not into nothing. 9.07 billion are in circulation, or 90.7 percent.
One detail: everything not held directly by the foundation counts as "circulating". ALGO owned by Algorand Inc. therefore count as circulating, even if they were never on the market.
The foundation has been selling for years. Its holdings according to its own transparency reports:
| Date | Foundation holdings (m ALGO) |
|---|---|
| 30 Sep 2022 | 2,993 |
| 31 Dec 2023 | 1,972 |
| 31 Dec 2024 | 1,645 |
| 31 Dec 2025 | 1,135 |
| 30 Jun 2026 | 1,036 |
Almost two thirds are gone in just under four years. Part went into rewards and grant programs, a large part was sold:
- In 2023, the foundation sold 473.7 million ALGO over the counter to the market maker DWF Labs for a total of $50 million. That is about $0.106 per ALGO.
- In November 2024, ALGO rose 287.8 percent. In the two quarters after that, the foundation sold 110 million (Q4 2024) and 174 million ALGO (Q1 2025).
- Since then, the pace has slowed: in the second quarter of 2026 it was 10.6 million.
The foundation has set itself rules for its sales: a daily maximum or a small share of trading volume, whichever is lower, and an automatic stop if the price falls 10 percent within 24 hours. The reports are not checked by outsiders; they carry the note "not audited".
The pattern is not new. In 2019, early investors got a rule under which their ALGO were released faster whenever the price reached a new 30-day high. In February and March 2021, more than 1 billion ALGO were released this way, and another 798 million in September 2021. Both fell into months in which the price rose sharply.
Who owns the rest? The ten largest accounts together hold 25.1 percent of all ALGO. None of them is labeled, none takes part in consensus, and none verifiably belongs to the foundation. Who owns them could not be established.
When ALGO rises, supply comes in. That was the case in 2021 and again in 2024.
What does that mean for the price over the long run?
The price against bitcoin: rises that did not last
Since its first trading day on Binance, 22 June 2019, ALGO has lost 96.4 percent. Bitcoin gained 723.1 percent over the same period.
Calendar years compared:
| Year | ALGO | Bitcoin |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 (from 22 Jun) | −93.6 % | −29.2 % |
| 2020 | +54.7 % | +302.0 % |
| 2021 | +394.8 % | +59.8 % |
| 2022 | −89.6 % | −64.2 % |
| 2023 | +29.2 % | +155.6 % |
| 2024 | +50.1 % | +121.3 % |
| 2025 | −67.0 % | −6.3 % |
| 2026 (Jan–Sep) | +12.1 % | −4.6 % |
ALGO beat bitcoin only in 2021 and, so far, in 2026.
Of 88 months, 39 ended up and 49 down. In 36 months ALGO was ahead of bitcoin. And when bitcoin fell, ALGO usually fell with it: of 40 down months for bitcoin, ALGO was also down in 34, with a median of −18.6 percent against −8.1 percent for bitcoin.
The high on a daily close was $2.3793 on 12 September 2021. The low came on 29 July 2026 at $0.0775.
What came after the big rises. Six times, ALGO rose more than 50 percent in a month. This is where it stood 180 days later:
| Month | ALGO in month | Bitcoin in month | ALGO 180 days later | Bitcoin 180 days later | What was behind it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 07/2020 | +57.1 % | +24.0 % | +65.4 % | +167.9 % | broad market rally |
| 08/2020 | +53.5 % | +2.8 % | +118.8 % | +295.8 % | ALGO only: transaction wave from one app family |
| 01/2021 | +94.3 % | +14.4 % | +30.9 % | +27.5 % | broad altcoin rally |
| 02/2021 | +56.8 % | +36.4 % | +4.2 % | +8.7 % | broad rally; release of over 1bn ALGO |
| 12/2023 | +66.6 % | +12.1 % | −37.3 % | +42.9 % | broad rally (AVAX, NEAR, SOL) |
| 11/2024 | +287.8 % | +37.2 % | −52.8 % | +9.5 % | broad rally (XLM, XRP, HBAR, ADA) |
Binance monthly candles, 180 days from month-end close. "Broad rally": the median of eleven comparable coins also rose sharply in the same month.
In five of six cases, ALGO was behind bitcoin 180 days later. Only after January 2021 was it narrowly ahead. Four of the six rises were not an ALGO story but moved with the whole market.
September 2021 is missing from the table because, at +46.2 percent, it fell just short of 50. It brought the all-time high, in the middle of a release of 798 million ALGO to early investors and shortly after the announcement of a "$300 million" fund. 180 days after that high, ALGO stood 70.5 percent lower, bitcoin 15.9 percent.
And usage? Whether ALGO rose or fell in a month has had almost nothing to do, since 2023, with whether transactions went up or down. The rank correlation is 0.13, where 1 would be perfect lockstep and 0 none at all. In January 2024, transactions almost tripled, and ALGO fell 28.6 percent.
This is what the last twelve months looked like:
| Oct 25 | Nov | Dec | Jan 26 | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| −14.7 (−3.9) | −23.0 (−17.6) | −19.1 (−3.0) | −5.9 (−10.2) | −15.5 (−14.9) | +6.8 (+2.0) | +17.6 (+11.8) | +15.6 (−3.5) | −35.0 (−20.4) | −4.9 (+7.3) | +8.5 (+25.0) | +44.7 (+6.4) |
ALGO in percent, bitcoin in brackets.
September 2026 did not move alone either: NEAR rose 178 percent in the same month, AVAX 51 percent. Whether ALGO holds on this time can only be read from late December.
The rises came with the market and then went again. Usage did not carry the price.
That leaves the partnerships Algorand is often marketed with. What is left of them?
What was announced and what can be checked
| Announcement | Who, when | What can be shown today | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marshall Islands digital currency SOV on Algorand | SFB Technologies and Algorand, 3 Mar 2020 | no launch traceable; in 2025 the Marshall Islands issued USDM1 on Stellar | not implemented |
| Land-registry infrastructure in El Salvador | Koibanx with the government, late August 2021 | no live operation traceable | not verifiable |
| FIFA: sponsor of the 2022 World Cup and the 2023 Women's World Cup | FIFA release, 2 May 2022 | since late November 2022 Algorand no longer activates its sponsorship rights, staying only a technical partner | partly, downgraded |
| SIAE copyrights as NFTs | SIAE and Algorand, 25 Mar 2021 | project launch documented, continued operation not | partly |
| World Chess / FIDE | since 2019, latest contract 20 Oct 2025 | running, paid from the foundation's staking rewards (estimated about $700,000 a year) | verified, as a paid partnership |
| PlanetWatch (air-quality data) | since 2020, about 35 % of all transactions in 2020/21 | taken over in March 2024, moved to Solana | discontinued |
| Viridis fund of "$300 million" | foundation, 10 Sep 2021 | meant 150 million ALGO at the price of the day; payout not documented | partly |
| Borderless Capital fund of $500 million | CoinDesk, 30 Nov 2021 | amount actually invested not documented | partly |
| Tether (USDT) on Algorand | – | issuance stopped 24 Jun 2024, $0.84m left | discontinued |
| "Carbon negative" | foundation, 22 Apr 2021 | no tonnage, no registry, no audit published | not verifiable |
| Exodus share on Algorand | since 2021 | $55.8m per rwa.xyz | verified |
| Post-quantum accounts | roadmap | live since 22 Aug 2026 | verified |
What was delivered is the technology. What was not delivered is above all the state projects: none of them verifiably runs on Algorand. The partnerships with big names from sport and chess are sponsorship, and for World Chess the foundation even pays explicitly out of its staking rewards.
Algorand paid for the big names itself. They bring hardly any fees on the chain.
What follows from this for you?
What this means for you
- Read the staking yield as a subsidy. Roughly 5 percent a year comes from the foundation's holdings, not from usage. The network takes in about one hundred-and-seventieth of that in fees.
- Note January 2027. That is how far the commitment reaches. Whether and how it continues after that has not been announced. The foundation's transparency reports come out quarterly and show how much was paid out and sold.
- Expect supply when the price rises. In 2021 there were releases for early investors, in 2024 sales by the foundation.
- Watch fees, not transactions. As long as 45 senders produce most transactions and the network takes in $142 a day, usage is no reason for ALGO to rise.
What is not claimed here: that Algorand is technically weak, or that the price has to fall. The technology holds up. The open question is whether, once the subsidy ends, there will be enough paid usage to keep stakers. That is the next number that can be measured.
FAQ
What happens to staking rewards after January 2027? That has not been announced. The documentation only says the bonus cannot be carried by fees and that the foundation will top up the pot "for several years". The announced new model "Project King Safety" has been postponed.
Why does Algorand count so many transactions? The chain's count also includes transactions that smart contracts trigger internally. About two thirds, some 750,000 a day, were signed by someone directly. Among those, too, a few automated senders account for a large share.
Are ALGO burned, as on Ethereum? No. Fees go into the fee sink, which also pays the staking rewards. DefiLlama's statement that all fees are burned is wrong.
Do the ALGO held by Algorand Inc. count as circulating? Yes. Since 2021, everything not held directly by the foundation counts as circulating.
How it was measured
All values retrieved on 12 October 2026 between 13:05 and 13:50 UTC. Usage via the chain's counters (algod, indexer), fees and composition from samples (2,000 block headers, 200 blocks with 7,325 transactions), peak days via 40 random blocks each. Active addresses via Artemis, TVL and stablecoins via DefiLlama, tokenized assets via rwa.xyz. Staking payouts from block headers; annual figures are simple extrapolations of the 30-day window. Foundation holdings and sales from the transparency reports 2021 to Q2 2026. Prices from Binance monthly and daily candles, monthly return = month-end close over previous month-end close, the first month from the listing on 22 June 2019. Comparison coins for the rallies: XRP, XLM, HBAR, ADA, AVAX, SOL, XTZ, EOS, NEAR, DOGE, ETH. Price against usage via Spearman rank correlation, 45 months from 2023.
All ALGO monthly returns in US dollars
| Year | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | – | – | – | – | – | −57.4 | −60.9 | −28.0 | −38.7 | −11.6 | +19.8 | −18.1 |
| 2020 | +14.1 | +30.8 | −52.4 | +35.9 | +11.4 | −10.7 | +57.1 | +53.5 | −30.9 | −28.3 | +32.2 | +1.9 |
| 2021 | +94.3 | +56.8 | +33.8 | +2.6 | −33.3 | −5.6 | −5.0 | +32.6 | +46.2 | +12.4 | −0.9 | −8.4 |
| 2022 | −42.7 | −8.6 | +7.0 | −39.0 | −27.5 | −23.5 | +6.8 | −14.2 | +22.5 | +1.4 | −30.9 | −30.4 |
| 2023 | +39.9 | +1.2 | −7.5 | −20.3 | −18.0 | −17.6 | −9.8 | −15.2 | +11.0 | +5.8 | +22.4 | +66.6 |
| 2024 | −28.6 | +33.0 | +26.5 | −33.5 | +5.6 | −23.2 | −6.1 | −9.1 | +8.8 | −14.7 | +287.8 | −24.6 |
| 2025 | +13.4 | −37.3 | −24.3 | +22.2 | −11.9 | −4.3 | +31.6 | −5.1 | −10.2 | −14.7 | −23.0 | −19.1 |
| 2026 | −5.9 | −15.5 | +6.8 | +17.6 | +15.6 | −35.0 | −4.9 | +8.5 | +44.7 | – | – | – |
Binance ALGOUSDT, month-end close against previous month-end close in percent; June 2019 from the opening on 22 Jun 2019 ($3.40).
Not investment advice, not a recommendation, not a forecast — historical patterns are no promise.
Study the Past — Improve your Future 🥋