As part of our ongoing journey to increased decentralization, we’re excited to support the Stacks Foundation and their valuable work in the ecosystem. Today, we (Blockstack PBC) are releasing details on a contribution agreement to transfer a number of assets to the Stacks Foundation. This helps bootstrap the Stacks Foundation and gives them initial resources for contributing to the Stacks ecosystem and blockchain. Details of the contribution agreement can be found in this Form 1-U, filed with the SEC today.

Blockstack PBC is transferring the following assets:

• 100M Stacks tokens (valued at ~$23M at today’s price).
• 950K USD loan for working capital.
• IP rights for the Stacks 2.0 blockchain software, under the requirement that the Foundation also make it available under an open-source license.
• IP rights for the domain names stacks.org, stacks.foundation, and stacksfoundation.com.

The Stacks Foundation will have complete control over these assets and complete discretion over their subsequent administration, development, and deployment. We hope that with our contribution, the Stacks Foundation can continue to work towards developer and user education, Stacks blockchain research, development, and protocol upgrade coordination. Exciting recent highlights from the foundation team include:

• Jude Nelson, core developer of Stacks blockchain, and now Research Scientist at the Stacks Foundation, is guiding work on the implementation of PoX on the Stacks 2.0 testnet and dramatically improved the SIP process through SIP-000.
• Ryan Arndt, who joined the Stacks Foundation on August 1st, recently organized the first weekly community call for the Stacks ecosystem. You can join future ones right in Discord.
• Brittany Lauglin helped add two board members to the Stacks Foundation: Zavain Dar (Lux Capital) and Rodolfo Gonzalez (Foundation Capital).

As noted in our recent post covering decentralization efforts, we believe that for us to be successful in our mission to build a user-owned internet, the infrastructure underlying the Stacks ecosystem cannot be controlled or significantly influenced by a single party. If it were the case that, in the long term, people relied on Blockstack PBC or some other entity to ensure the stability and development of the Stacks ecosystem, it would never reach its full potential.

We believe the transfer of these assets will help ensure that influence and control are effectively distributed among independent entities in the ecosystem.

→ Read more about the other steps we’re taking toward decentralization.

The 100M STX contribution comes in addition to initial working capital Blockstack PBC is providing and includes the 30M STX allocated for App Mining rewards.

The Stacks Foundation was created in collaboration with the community through the Governance Working Group, independent research by Lane Rettig (previously of the Ethereum Foundation) and generous advice from peers and non-profit foundations in the blockchain and open-source industries.

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Forward-looking statements

This communication contains forward-looking statements that are based on our beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to us. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: “will,” “expect,” “would,” “intend,” “believe,” or other comparable terminology. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different. We cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.