quote: Stan has been an integral part of SKALE’s journey since the very beginning, and we want to recognize and thank him for his extraordinary contributions over the past eight years. From co-founding SKALE to helping build and develop the technology that powers the network today, his dedication and technical leadership have played an important role in shaping the ecosystem. SKALE has always been an open-source project, and we believe its greatest strength lies in the people and organizations contributing to its development. We are pleased that Stan intends to continue building and contributing to SKALE. Having more developers, contributors, and businesses working on SKALE from different organizations is very good for the ecosystem. We also appreciate Stan’s suggestions regarding the composition of the SKALE Foundation board. The Foundation Council will carefully review and consider his proposal, including the role of technical expertise in supporting the network’s future. As a charitable, nonprofit organization, the NODE Foundation exists to support the protocol and its mission and development. Its responsibility is to act in the long-term interests of the ecosystem, and constructive input from contributors, validators, developers, and community members is an important part of that process. We look forward to seeing Stan continue contributing to SKALE, alongside the many other individuals and organizations helping move the network forward. | TO SKALE community: I stepped down as CTO and board director of SKALE Labs, the company I co-founded in 2017. I remain a member of the Council of the SKALE Foundation, and I want to explain what I am asking the Foundation to do, because I think the community should weigh in. SKALE is a protocol. It runs because of a small team of engineers who have shipped it, debugged it, and kept it live for years. They understand what is technically possible and what is not. Today none of them sits on the Foundation board. I believe that is a mistake. A protocol foundation whose board has no builders on it will make decisions about roadmaps, grants, and network economics without the people who have to make those decisions work. That is how protocols drift. The good ones, from Ethereum to Cosmos, keep engineers at the table where the long-term direction is set. My proposal is simple: expand the Foundation board by three seats, filled by people with deep software and protocol engineering backgrounds. I have put this proposal to the Foundation formally. I will share what I am able to share as it proceeds. What I am asking of you today is only this: if you agree that the people who build SKALE should help govern it, say so publicly. Validators, delegators, dApp teams, and token holders are who the Foundation exists to serve, and your voice matters to the outcome. In the meanytime I am going to keep building SKALE.