Bitcoin’s lead developer and chief maintainer, Wladimir van der Laan, has confirmed that he is retiring. He was the second successor to Satoshi Nakamoto and one of the very few in the world to have full access to the Bitcoin Core GitHub.
Longest-lived Bitcoin developer retires
In the entire history of Bitcoin (BTC), Wladimir van der Laan is certainly one of the most important names and paradoxically one of the least known. Initially a contributor, then quickly becoming a lead developer, he has played a major role in building Bitcoin as we know it today.
And for good reason, he is one of the only people in the world with access to the GitHub code of Bitcoin Core, the reference software implementation of Bitcoin. Indeed, although developed in a decentralized, free and open source manner, this software has a certain hierarchy and a Lead Maintainer.
Originally, this role was held by Satoshi Nakamoto himself. He handed it over in February 2011 to Gavin Andresen, before disappearing. The latter finally appointed Wladimir van der Laan as his successor on April 7, 2014. This makes him the longest-serving lead Bitcoin developer, and the second successor to Satoshi Nakamoto.
After eight years of dedicating his time and energy to the successful development of the Bitcoin network, it seems that van der Laan has decided to step down from his duties. For the time being, no successor has been appointed, although Pieter Wuille is the most suitable to take over.
There are several reasons for his choice
In January 2021, Wladimir van der Laan had already announced that he wanted to step down from his duties. After more years at the helm of Bitcoin than anyone else, including Satoshi Nakamoto, he was expressing concerns about being “a centralized bottleneck” for Bitcoin’s development.
It was only last week, in response to several series of tweets, that he validated the news. Since then, his bio on the bluebird social network has simply been changed to “ex: Bitcoin Core”. Through his posts, van der Laan gave several hints as to the motivation behind his departure.
First, he mentioned burnout as one of the main reasons. The Bitcoin community has often been considered difficult, even “toxic,” especially on social networks like Twitter. For example, van der Laan pointed out the psychological impact of recurring criticism of years-old mistakes.
Moreover, Bitcoin developers are essentially volunteer workers. It is possible that some receive charitable donations from companies or Bitcoin holders to subsidize their work. However, even with these donations, most network developers are underpaid compared to their counterparts in other industries.
It was this social networking violence that motivated van der Laan to maintain a semblance of anonymity, disclosing very little information about his personal life. He made it clear that in the future, he would like to move away from the cryptocurrency sector, feeling that he has already contributed enough to the industry.
What will happen next?
For the time being, van der Laan has yet to name a successor. According to the hierarchy set up by Satoshi Nakamoto, it is absolutely necessary to have someone in the position of Chief Maintainer of Bitcoin Core. In the current order, Pieter Wuille could take over.
However, it is quite possible that van der Laan will decide not to appoint a successor in order to voluntarily end his position. By doing so, he would like to make his last move for Bitcoin, making it even more decentralized than it is now.
Indeed, van der Laan is the only one who holds the administrative key to the Bitcoin Core GitHub. His ultimate goal would be to make access to this key completely decentralized, so much so that Bitcoin would no longer need a Master Maintainer.
In his first announcement in January 2021, he had already published a plan to achieve this goal. This included the possibility of decentralizing development tasks and, above all, no longer depending on GitHub to host code.
After eight years in this position, the Bitcoin community has warmly thanked Wladimir van der Laan for his involvement, his time, his energy and the wonderful work he has done to keep Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation alive and evolving.
