The only way to start this blog post is to thank all Nimiq Community members for their relentless support for the project, especially recently.

The past months have been quieter than we would have liked, and we would rather own that than let it pass. You have every reason to ask what happened at Nimiq after the transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. We communicated too little and, when we did, spoke around the real issue: we were divided over the project's direction.

It is important to give you some clarity on what has happened and how it has been resolved. This post explains how that deadlock arose, how it ended, and what changes now.

The disagreement we did not resolve

Shortly after Proof of Stake went live, a fundamental disagreement emerged within the Nimiq Foundation and its leadership.

Some team members proposed expanding the Foundation's work beyond the continued development and hardening of the Nimiq protocol and ecosystem. This included exploring products that would not be built on or directly integrated with Nimiq. The reasoning was that successful products elsewhere might generate revenue and capabilities that could later strengthen the Nimiq ecosystem indirectly.

The other direction was to keep the Foundation's limited people, funds, and attention focused directly on the Nimiq protocol and ecosystem.

Both were presented as paths toward a stronger future for Nimiq. But they did not lead to the same organization, and a small Foundation could not execute both strategies at once.

The problem was not that these ideas were discussed. An organization should question its assumptions. The problem was that leadership did not resolve the disagreement quickly enough.

What followed was more than a year of evaluations, workshops, restructuring, and internal debate. Work on Nimiq continued, but the disagreement slowed prioritization and decision-making across the Team, including decisions concerning protocol work. Communication became increasingly cautious because we did not have an agreed direction to work towards, or to communicate to the outside.

No alternative mission was ultimately adopted; the only result was a prolonged stalemate.

The community experienced the consequences without being told the cause. That was a failure, and the current Foundation's Board is committed to righting that wrong.

A new structure could not settle the most important question

About a year after launching Proof of Stake, we introduced a new team structure. It clarified areas of responsibility, coordination mechanisms, and decision-making authority, but left the strategic disagreement and the same Board unchanged because the disagreements did not end. We had changed the boxes on the governance chart before finishing answering the question above them: what is the Foundation here to do? People can disagree about strategy in good faith. But the project cannot continue operating around two opposing answers to its own purpose. It was time for a major change.

June 2026: ending the deadlock

By June 2026, team members were calling for a leadership change that could resolve the Foundation's identity crisis.

The serving Board invited the team to take part in a non-binding advisory vote on the future composition of the Board: the first consultation of its kind in the Foundation's history.

The vote did not itself elect or appoint directors. The team had no formal corporate voting power, and under the Foundation's governance that authority remained with the Board. The serving Board used the team's recommendation as the basis for the transition.

Then the new Board was appointed in June 2026.

The first task was not another round of open-ended exploration but to decide what the Foundation exists for and to finally make decisions.

We chose Nimiq

Nimiq exists to empower individuals with open and independent money.

That is not just a slogan for us.

The Nimiq Foundation exists to support the Nimiq protocol and ecosystem. It is not a general-purpose venture studio. We may build products, pursue partnerships, and earn revenue, but those activities must directly follow Nimiq's mission. Building unrelated ventures in the hope that their success may eventually flow back to Nimiq is not our strategy.

The Foundation does not exist to maximize or distribute profits to anybody. We want to have a social impact. Revenue is a means to sustain work in furtherance of its mission, not the purpose of the Nimiq Foundation.

Once the direction was settled, we reorganized the Foundation's workstreams and resources around it. Some colleagues chose a different path, and some roles no longer fitted in the new structure. The Foundation offered career transition support so that we could move on quickly. This was not a judgment on anyone's previous contribution or motives. It was the necessary end of asking one team to execute two incompatible missions.

Debate before a decision is necessary, but permanent ambiguity after a decision is not a strategy.

New leadership and simplified structure

A new direction is only as good as the people committed to carrying it through. The Foundation has been reorganized around this mission.

The Governance Board oversees the Foundation's mission, values, budgets, and leadership and serves as the final escalation point within the organization. It governs the Foundation, not the decentralized Nimiq network.

A Strategy Group develops strategic proposals and reviews progress for consideration by the Foundation's leadership and Board.

Our new Executive Director coordinates the Foundation's priorities and workstreams and connects its governance with the work carried out across the project.

Three core workstreams organize the Foundation-supported work:

• Protocol covers maintenance of the Foundation's reference implementations, research, and proposed protocol changes.
• Apps covers the Foundation's existing end-user products and development of a new flagship application.
• Communications covers communication with users, builders, validators, and the community, as well as support for ecosystem applications.

The Central Services support all three workstreams across design, IT, finance, and administration.

The team is smaller than it has been in the past, and the structure is deliberately simpler: fewer coordination layers, fewer workstreams, an accountable owner for every product and service, and clear decision ownership. Structure alone did not solve our earlier conflict. Its purpose now is to execute a mission we have actually chosen.

What comes next

This post establishes the direction, not the detailed roadmap we want to work on.

A separate post follows shortly, setting out the renewed vision in full and what it commits us to for the protocol, our products, and NIM. A core part of that direction is focus. We plan to continue improving the Nimiq protocol to enable features such as quantum resistance, stablecoins, interoperability with Ethereum, increased performance, and privacy, among others. In addition to the protocol, the team will build one end-user application, whose purpose is to act as a gateway to the Nimiq blockchain.

We will then publish our roadmap in a dedicated forum section, followed by a separate post about the flagship end-user application. We developed the proposed roadmap internally following the Board transition and will now open it to the community for discussion. It will distinguish active development, research, and longer-term proposals. Plans remain subject to technical validation, security review, available resources, and regulatory requirements. When they change, we will explain what changed and why.

What is no longer undecided is the purpose behind our work. Nimiq exists to empower individuals with open and independent money. A world where anyone, anywhere, can hold and move money that is truly theirs. Open, independent, and resistant to the failures and exclusions of closed systems.

Thank you

To everyone who stayed through the slow periods, the uncertainty, and the mistakes we made along the way: thank you. That includes the community, independent contributors, validators, builders, and the team members who kept working while the Foundation struggled to decide what it wanted to be.

You deserved this explanation earlier.

A mission statement does not recover lost time, and a governance chart does not prove that a structure works. Judge this direction by what follows: the roadmap, the product plan, the work we ship, and the honesty with which we report progress and setbacks.

This post draws the line.

Pura Vida

Team Nimiq