I’m excited to write to you formally as an employee of the Stacks Foundation. We kicked off work on the independent foundation in early February through the Governance Working Group and hiring Lane Retting as an independent researcher. Four months later and we’re officially operational as the Stacks Foundation, created to serve our mission of a user owned internet.
Now, the real work begins, for the Foundation and the community. The initial scope of the Stacks Foundation is to provide (a.) governance for the Stacks blockchain upgrades and help with future improvements to the protocol, (b.) provide ecosystem grants for infrastructure building and app development, and (c.) research & education for technologies for an open internet.
Our most critical priorities in the near term are:
- Establish a working organization, including the MVP board, bylaws, and corporation
- Decentralize the SIPs process to support the Stacks 2.0 launch by independent miners
- Build trust with the community through transparency and communication
We’ve already made a lot of progress on these through the governance working group and contributions from Blockstack team members. Now, I invite you to get involved in the upcoming priorities to serve our mission. I’ve outlined priorities for the next two quarters below and I want your feedback. These priorities are not comprehensive on everything we could do, so feedback, proposals for additional work streams, and contribution towards these goals is how we make them a reality.
| Initiatives | Goal | Q2 Priorities | Q3 Priorities | Asks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nonprofit Organization | Pursue the mission in a compliant, transparent, and accountable way | - Establish the Stacks Open Internet Foundation - Draft Governance Proposal - Recruit three board members - Finalize bylaws with community input - Initial donation from PBC - Community nominations for additional board members - Scope community board seat |
- First board meeting to accept bylaws and induct new board members - Establish the community board seat - Final governance proposal |
- Nomination additional board members and input on community board seat: Call for Stacks Foundation Board Nominations - Feedback on draft Bylaws |
| Open Communication | Build trust and community opportunities through clear communication channels | - Stacks.org website - Weekly working group calls (eng, governance) - Github repo with resources |
- Regular newsletter to highlight the community | - Input on Github issues: https://github.com/stacksgov |
| Technology | Technology upgrades are managed by multiple parties | - Draft SIPs Proposal - Publish SIPs Proposal - Hire Core Engineer - Host public weekly Engineering calls |
- Establish the Technical Committee - Stacks 2.0 accepted by min of 20 independent miners |
- Feedback on SIPs proposal https://github.com/stacksgov/pm/issues/22 |
| Research | Collaborate with new and existing technical, social, or economic researchers who support our mission | - Plan on how to engage academic and public researchers, ie: fellowship | - Data on fellowship programs to research | |
| Education | Educate new users and developers about our mission, tools, and resources | - Support hackathons and developer education resources | - Organize STX blockchain information online - Amplify hackathons and educational resources - Call for education resources from the community |
- Amplify upcoming hackathons and existing edu resources |
| Grants & Bounties | Fund ecosystem development | - Research grant programs | - Propose grant program pilot - Brainstorm App Mining updates - Community transparency for grant and funding process |
- Educate potential grantees - Research on grant programs that work |
| Economics | Enable access to the STX token and support token economic upgrades | - Collaborate with Flipside Crypto for blockchain scoring and transparency | - Draft Economic Committee - Nominate Committee Members - Wallet support for STX token, including hardware and diverse geos - Custody support for STX tokens across geos and sizes |
- Suggestions for Economic Committee - Wallet, custody, and exchanges that can provide more utility to the community |
Please share your feedback or work against these priorities in the comments below. We may migrate updates like these to github, so input on format is also welcome.
Thank you to the governance working group for initiating many of these workstreams, especially the work to provide more documentation.
Thanks,
Brittany
Executive Director, Stacks Foundation
Statements made here are future looking and should be treated as such.