I’ve followed the progression of SIP-031 and SIP-031.1 closely, and after sending some feedback to the SIP authors earlier in the process, I want to acknowledge areas where I believe important progress has been made — and also leave my thoughts on where I think the community should keep its attention in the future.
Encouraging Improvements
1. Treasury Committee (TC) Selection
There have been meaningful improvements in governance clarity and in the process for selecting the Treasury Committee. I’m especially encouraged by how rigorous the Appointment Committee process has been. The final nominee list looks strong — and beyond this SIP, it could serve as a valuable reference point for forming future community committees or reserve teams for TC. I feel confident about this part.
It’s also worth highlighting that the initial draft proposed 5 keyholders and only 4 community-appointed seats — a structure that could have allowed community voices to be consistently outvoted. That has now shifted to 4 keyholders and 5 community-appointed seats, removing the risk of keyholder majority control. This update better reflects the community-first governance spirit that Stacks aims to uphold.
2. Support for Governance Funding
I’m glad to see up to $500K USD explicitly committed to sustaining decentralized governance efforts. As other parts of the ecosystem scale, governance and the SIP process must scale as well — both in capacity and capability. It’s foundational infrastructure that must evolve in step with the rest.
Fiscal Discipline and Runway
1. Financial Discipline Matters
Even with the best teams, best programs, best products, strong integrations, and solid PMF — if financial discipline isn’t baked in early, spending can easily outpace results. When that happens, momentum can stall quickly.
The Treasury must be managed with a long-term mindset: not just to unlock rapid activation, but to preserve resources over time. Without sustainable and well-managed cash flow, the ecosystem can quickly find itself out of ammo. Plenty of great Web2 companies have gone bust due to cash flow problems — and crypto is no different. I hope the CIO hire will bring strong persistent financial discipline experience to the table.
2. The Most Important Sentence in SIP-031 for Me
The most important line in the entire proposal appears in the LINK 
SIP-031 - Potential Risks section:
“Should STX remain below $1 for an extended period, the Endowment may need to scale back spending or extend its fundraising timeline to preserve capital and uphold fiscal discipline.”
This one sentence captures the heart of what matters during market downturns: the ability to make hard decisions — to pause or reduce spending when conditions are unfavorable or when fundraising falls short — is essential.
Closely tied to that is the need for long-term runway visibility. I appreciated the inclusion of the Nomiks report, with its financial projections and funding gap scenarios (@Resh brought up before). Grounding strategy in forward-looking modeling like this is critical for helping the ecosystem pace itself wisely.
Read the Nomiks Treasury Report → https://forum.stacks.org/uploads/short-url/pgKEv8ljXuWpCC1GnkyIi3pD8SV.pdf
Forward Outlook
Overall, I’m supportive of SIP-031 and the direction it sets.
What will matter most is execution: how spending is managed, how the Endowment adapts to real-world conditions, and whether we maintain financial discipline through both bull and bear markets.
Spending with intention and staying within our means gives the ecosystem the best shot at durable, long-term success.