# Governance

Governance should evolve alongside the maturity of the network.

At the current stage, Terminus is best served by strong execution, operational clarity, and focused leadership. Long-term credibility, however, requires a path from founder-led coordination toward broader ecosystem participation. Governance is therefore not a static design choice. It is a staged system.

## Phase One: Core Team Governance

In the early phase, governance should remain concentrated enough to preserve execution quality. Payment products involve infrastructure reliability, partner coordination, compliance sensitivity, and market-entry discipline. These conditions favor operational coherence over premature decentralization.

During this phase, the core team remains responsible for:

* product development,
* market expansion,
* partner integration,
* treasury discipline,
* and the initial design of token programs.

## Phase Two: Foundation and Association-Led Coordination

As the network expands, governance can begin to diversify. The `Foundation / Treasury` function and the `Terminus Payment Association` can provide a transitional governance architecture that supports broader coordination without destabilizing execution.

At this stage, governance may expand to include:

* ecosystem program oversight,
* standards and participation guidelines,
* strategic treasury deployment,
* and network-level policy formation.

This phase matters because it creates the institutional scaffolding required for more distributed governance later on.

## Phase Three: Community and Ecosystem Participation

A mature network should allow aligned stakeholders to play a meaningful role in governance. This does not require immediate direct democracy over every decision. It does require a credible path for community and ecosystem voices to influence the system in structured ways.

Potential areas for future governance participation include:

* incentive program adjustments,
* ecosystem grants,
* association proposals,
* treasury priorities,
* and selected protocol or network parameters.

## Governance Principles

The Terminus governance framework should be guided by several principles:

* execution before ceremony,
* transparency before complexity,
* alignment before decentralization theater,
* and gradual expansion of decision rights as the network matures.

## Governance as Trust Infrastructure

In Web3, governance is often discussed as ideology. For payment networks, it should be discussed as trust infrastructure.

Good governance gives participants confidence that the network can grow, adapt, and persist beyond its founding phase. That is the role governance should play in Terminus.
