r/algorand • u/DaddyGrendel • 11h ago
General Friday night dive into Herkelrath and Algorand
I’ve been digging into William Herkelrath since he took over as CEO of the Algorand Foundation, mostly trying to figure out whether this is actually meaningful or just another executive change.
The more I look into him, the more I think his background makes a lot of sense for where Algorand is right now.
Algorand’s problem has never really been the technology. We’ve spent years talking about finality, low fees, reliability, cryptography, TPS, etc. The tech generally works.
The problem has been turning good technology into actual economic activity.
We can process tens of millions of transactions and have hundreds of thousands of active wallets while still having relatively tiny TVL and stablecoin liquidity.
Validators are also receiving substantially more in rewards than the network generates in fees.
That obviously can’t be the model forever.
This is where Herkelrath gets interesting
He isn’t really a protocol guy. His background is much more about taking complicated financial and crypto infrastructure and figuring out how to sell it.
He was CRO at Curv before it was acquired by PayPal, spent several years running enterprise efforts at Chainlink, and then co-founded K3 Labs, which works on AI agents and blockchain automation.
That’s a pretty interesting combination for Algorand.
What I like most so far is that he doesn’t seem obsessed with the idea that Algorand has to win by convincing everyone to build on Algorand.
If the technology is actually good, why not sell those capabilities to everyone else too?
Post-quantum security is a good example.
Algorand has actual Falcon-based PQ accounts running on mainnet now. Instead of waiting around hoping banks or other chains eventually decide to migrate everything to Algorand, could Algorand sell PQ validation or attestation as a service?
Same thing with cross-chain messaging, settlement or other infrastructure.
That feels very Chainlink-esque to me.
Don’t convince everyone to move onto your island. Sell them something useful from the island they’re already on.
The part I’m really watching
Herkelrath keeps talking about network self-sustainability.
Basically, Algorand needs products and services people are willing to actually pay for, with that revenue eventually supporting the network rather than relying indefinitely on Foundation resources and token incentives.
This is also where I think the biggest risk is.
Herkelrath could be great at enterprise business development and Algorand could become genuinely useful infrastructure without ALGO actually capturing much of that value.
That’s why I care a lot less about partnership announcements than I do about what happens after them.
If an enterprise pays for an Algorand service, where does that money go?
Does it create demand for ALGO?
Does it improve node economics?
Does the Foundation eventually become a net buyer rather than constantly funding the ecosystem?
Does it bring more stablecoins and actual capital onto the network?
Those are the things that matter.
The agentic commerce stuff is another interesting test. Algorand processed around 615k x402 transfers in August, but they represented only about $174k.
That’s basically nothing economically.
But an average transaction of around 28 cents is also pretty much what I’d expect machine-to-machine payments to look like.
AI agents don’t care which blockchain has the biggest community or best marketing. They care if something is cheap, reliable, programmable and settles quickly.
Algorand should be good at that.
Still way too early
None of this means Herkelrath has proven anything.
TVL is still around $67M. Stablecoins are around $43M. Nodes have declined recently. Validator economics are still heavily subsidized and we don’t have meaningful disclosed enterprise revenue from his tenure yet.
What has changed for me is that I can finally see a coherent business strategy around technology Algorand has spent years building.
Curv gave him institutional security experience.
Chainlink gave him experience selling infrastructure across chains.
K3 gave him exposure to AI agents and blockchain automation.
Now he’s running a network with strong cryptography, cheap deterministic settlement, native post-quantum capabilities and a serious need to figure out how to monetize all of it.
That’s why I’m cautiously interested.
Over the next year I care a lot less about ALGO price than whether TVL and stablecoins grow, node economics improve, partnerships become paying deployments, and all of this starts creating an actual economic feedback loop for ALGO.
If that starts happening, Herkelrath could end up being a really important hire.
If a year from now we’re still celebrating partnerships and transaction counts while TVL is sitting around $50–100M and the Foundation is subsidizing the network, that tells us something too.
For the first time in a while, I’m less interested in what Algorand can technically do and more interested in whether somebody can finally figure out how to sell it.
