Another Core Bitcoin Developer Departs from the Project
Wladimir van der Laan, the lead maintainer of Bitcoin Core, has officially stepped down from his maintenance role, as he had planned since 2021.
Wladimir van der Laan’s access to Bitcoin Core’s GitHub repository was revoked on February 16, as per his own proposal.
Van der Laan was one of the longest-standing contributors to Bitcoin Core, having taken on the role of lead maintainer in 2014. However, by early 2021, he had expressed his intention to step away due to health issues and the inability to continue.
Van der Laan’s departure follows a similar move by Bitcoin Core maintainer Jonas Schnelli in October 2021, who cited stress related to increasing legal risks for developers.
Over the past 18 months, four core maintainers have confirmed their departure from the project for similar reasons. This list includes John Newbery, Samuel Dobson—who resigned to focus on completing his Ph.D.—and Peter Wuille, who decided to scale back his contributions to Bitcoin Core but continues to support the project in other ways.
Bitcoin Core is a critical project for maintaining Bitcoin, granting developers direct access to Bitcoin’s codebase to merge new changes. The future of Bitcoin will depend significantly on this development team, as no one can predict how code changes might impact the world's largest cryptocurrency.
In recent years, there have been increasing concerns about internal discord within the maintenance team, leading to the departure of several key members despite the prestige associated with having access to the code of the world’s largest cryptocurrency. However, Dobson has stated that these departures are merely coincidental.
