Introducing the Stacks Endowment

Today we're introducing the Stacks Endowment, a dedicated treasury built to fund the long-term growth of Stacks and the broader Bitcoin economy. This week, its first annual budget was adopted by the Treasury Committee, the community-appointed body that guides the Endowment and approves its annual budget. We want to share what the Endowment is, how it's governed, and where it's headed.

For years, the Stacks ecosystem has grown through the work of independent builders, contributors, and community members. The Endowment gives that growth a durable financial backbone. It is a single, well-governed treasury whose mandate is to allocate funding to ecosystem contributors and builders, deploying capital where it does the most to advance Bitcoin's leading L2.

Born from SIP-031

The Endowment didn't appear out of nowhere. It is the product of SIP-031, the "growth SIP," and a deliberately transparent, community-driven process. The community ran open workshops to define what it wanted and nominated and selected a Treasury Appointments Committee. That committee in turn selected the Treasury Committee responsible for stewarding the Endowment. Funding the ecosystem traces back through a chain that the community built and voted on.

What the Stacks Endowment is

The Stacks Endowment is a Cayman Islands foundation company established to steward and deploy treasury funds in service of the Stacks ecosystem. It operates in partnership with the Stacks Treasury Committee, who serves as the community council. The committee provides guidance to the Endowment and reviews and approves how treasury funds are deployed.

The committee operates with clear guardrails written into the Endowment's bylaws. It can seat up to nine members, who serve four-year terms. It holds approval authority over the three things that matter most: the Endowment's annual budget, its grant program budget and priority areas, and its investment policy and asset allocation.

Three committee members are seated today, and the remaining members will be appointed in September 2025. This will broaden the committee's perspective ahead of its next round of decisions. As laid out in SIP-031, community seats are confirmed through a 2/3 community vote, which keeps appointments accountable to the people the Endowment serves.

With that committee in place, the Endowment adopted its first annual budget on 26 August 2025.

Where the capital goes

Rather than fund in an ad-hoc way, the Endowment's first budget allocates across five clear pillars. The approved framework breaks down as follows.

• Bootstrapping network growth (31%). This covers grants, bounties, user incentives, key integrations and partnerships, and ecosystem development. It is the flywheel that brings more capital, builders, and users onto Bitcoin through Stacks.
• Working Capital (27%). This is the liquidity the Endowment needs to operate and support the ecosystem effectively.
• Growth & Marketing (20%). This funds brand, events, developer relations, and the programs that bring new participants in.
• Engineering & Security (12%). This funding keeps ecosystem apps and infrastructure resilient.
• Operations & Staff (10%). This covers the people and systems that run the Endowment.

The first budget runs through 30 June 2026. It is deliberately scoped so the committee can review allocations against real outcomes and adjust as the ecosystem evolves.

Built for accountability

A treasury is only as good as its discipline, and the Endowment is designed around that principle. Spending in sensitive categories requires transaction-by-transaction approval. Allocations are reviewed on a set cadence that spans annual, semi-annual, quarterly, and ad-hoc reviews, so capital can move quickly on time-sensitive opportunities while staying within approved limits. The Endowment also carries explicit transparency obligations to the community with monthly office hours and quarterly updates.

Allocations aren't set in stone. They are reviewed at each committee meeting, evaluated against what's actually working, and re-weighted toward the priorities that move the ecosystem forward.

Why it matters

Bitcoin is the most secure, most adopted, and most underutilized asset in crypto, with over a trillion dollars in latent capital waiting to be activated. Stacks is how that capital comes online for apps, DeFi, and smart contracts. The Stacks Endowment exists to accelerate that activation. It funds the builders, the incentives, the security, and the growth that turn Bitcoin's potential into a working economy.

This is the start. We will continue to share updates as the Endowment deploys its first budget and as the committee sets priorities for what comes next.