Developer Gloria Zhao resigned from her position as Bitcoin Core maintainer on February 5th.
Zhao posted a pull request (pull request) #34517 (in the Bitcoin GitHub repository). In this technical actthe engineer requested deletion of the PGP key From a list of trusted companies.
This resignation marks the end of a historic phase of protocol development. Mr. Zhao made history in July 2022. in First female Bitcoin maintaineras reported by CriptoNoticias. During his tenure, he led important innovations such as the packaged relay system.
Specializing in mempool policies allows us to optimize the validation of transactions before they are included in the chain. Mr. Zhao prioritized resistance to censorship and technological efficiency. About more profitable trading options. The engineer previously rejected offers from companies such as Google to focus entirely on Bitcoin open source.
In January this year, the portal reported that attackers had compromised the developer’s X (Twitter) account. The perpetrators used their profiles to promote scams related to the Solana ecosystem.
Bitcoin’s trajectory and legacy
The technical community has linked its departure to exhaustion caused by the recent debate surrounding OP_RETURN. Mr. Zhao was in favor of relaxing restrictions on non-financial data in transactions. of Bitcoin. This position caused strong friction with the most conservative development sectors, which questioned the expanded use of blocks.
Zhao’s departure leaves Ava Chow as the only woman among the small group of current maintainers. The team currently has only five experts overseeing updates for the network’s most used clients. The maintainer acts as the final auditor who approves changes. Suggested by the community and discussed previously. While hundreds of active contributors develop and propose improvements to Bitcoin, maintainers have the technical responsibility for integrating them into the official code and provide their own ideas and fixes.
Zhao plans to continue her work as a freelance contributor, focusing on code reviews and training new programmers.
Ava Chow and the rest of the team immediately acknowledged Zhao’s departure. The technical process included updating the repository’s anchor points to ensure historical consistency, which removed Zhao’s key from the repository.