Bitcoin Core Maintainer Gloria Zhao Resigns, Revokes Signing Key After Six Years

Bitcoin Core key maintainer, Gloria Zhao, has officially stepped down from her role. She revoked her PGP signing key through a pull request on GitHub, marking the end of her six-year tenure with the project. During her tenure, Zhao focused on mempool validation, transaction relay policies, and improvements in fee estimation.

Zhao’s resignation has sparked a range of reactions among social media enthusiasts. However, this move aligns with established open-source protocols and poses no threat to the security of Bitcoin’s network, its consensus rules, or transaction processing. The event will be noted as a significant moment in the crypto space.

Zhao’s Rise and Contributions

Gloria Zhao began contributing to Bitcoin Core in 2019 and became a Brink fellow in 2021, where she focused on improving transaction efficiency and mitigating censorship risks in the mempool. Among her notable achievements are enhancements to package relay through BIP 331 and the introduction of TRUC via BIP 431.

These innovations helped reduce fee-bumping inefficiencies and strengthened the peer-to-peer protocol’s performance. In July 2022, Zhao’s PGP key was added to the trusted-keys list, making her the first known woman to serve as a Bitcoin Core maintainer for about 3.5 years after succeeding Pieter Wuille, who stepped down earlier that year.

As part of a small team of volunteer maintainers, she was responsible for code reviews, merge approvals, and release signing. Zhao authored hundreds of commits and was an active participant in PR Review Club discussions, earning praise from colleagues for her technical expertise and commitment to furthering protocol development.

Zhao Stays Silent on Resignation Details

Zhao’s work significantly reinforced Bitcoin’s resilience without altering core consensus rules. However, before her resignation, she faced criticism for controversial decisions, including changing OP_RETURN data limits in Bitcoin Core v30. Her exit is one among many, involving notable figures in the crypto space.

Following her resignation, Zhao updated the trusted-git-root to reflect her final signed commit, noting that the action was “as planned.” Other maintainers, including Andrew Chow, and reviewers like Darosior and stickies-v quickly approved the change and expressed appreciation for her contributions. The process went off without a hitch, with no reported conflicts.

Meanwhile, Zhao did not provide any public explanation for her departure and did not respond to media inquiries. Online speculation, particularly on X, linked her exit to unrelated historical claims about 2015 MIT funding ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Bitcoin Core, however, continues to develop through a decentralized contributor base, demonstrating stable performance even during such transitions.

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