Voting and Participation Keys

A protocol player (as defined in the ABFT specification) is any actor that participates in the Algorand agreement protocol.

This section specifies the key infrastructure required for an active player to take part in the protocol.

To participate in the agreement, a player must control an account (that is, a root key pair), and must generate a set of participation keys associated with it.

To declare their intent to join the agreement protocol, players register their participation keys.

After some protocol rounds since the participation keys registration on the Ledger (known as balance lookback period \( \delta_b \), defined in the ABFT specification), the player becomes an active participant in the agreement protocol. From that round, the account may be selected to propose blocks or to vote during the agreement protocol stages, until the expiration of the participation keys registration.

For further details about the structure of a participation keys registration (keyreg) transaction, refer to the Ledger specification.