He previously admitted the role left him feeling exhausted, telling CoinDesk in May 2018: “I was the lead maintainer across all the projects, and at some point last year I was like: I can’t do this.» He continued: “I will always be an advocate for privacy, and for monero, a part of the monero community, but my actual responsibilities by definition need to be reduced.»
Riccardo Spagni, better known by the alias «Fluffypony,» will relinquish his day-to-day leadership role in the privacy coin project. Longtime contributor «Snipa» will assume the responsibilities of lead maintainer, according to a post by the monero core team.
After five years at the helm, monero’s lead maintainer says he is stepping down.
The post says the move is being made to «better streamline developments and collaborations» but does not say when the changeover will take place, although it notes Spagni «will continue as a backup maintainer to relieve Snipa during times when he is busy or on vacation.» Spagni also plans to continue working on Tari, a decentralized asset protocol built on the monero blockchain.
«I’m stepping back as lead maintainer but continuing on as a maintainer, to further decentralize the project,» Spagni told Decrypt Wednesday.
Spagni has been the lead maintainer since monero began in 2014. The role includes leading development and engineering efforts as well as administrative functions, such as signing off on email announcements.
Spagni has gradually tried to detach himself from the project. Last year he stepped down as CEO of XMR wallet interface, MyMonero, and passed responsibilities for the official monero website and for all monero GUI Graphic User Interface projects to fellow core team member, luigi1111.
Spagni had previously said stepping down would decentralize monero. «I am determined to further reduce any reliance on me over time by continuing this trend, with an eventual goal of handing off the task of lead maintainer on the Monero CLI repo once we have added full support for deterministic builds,» he wrote in a Reddit post in May 2018.
Micree Zhan Says He’ll Take Legal Action to Return to Bitmain
Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain’s co-founder Micree Zhan, who was abruptly ousted from the company last week, said he’s going to take legal action to secure his return to the firm.
In a letter posted on his WeChat feed Wednesday, Zhan publicly addressed what he described as a coup without consent for the first time. Last week, fellow co-founder Jihan Wu told all Bitmain staff in a surprising email that Zhan had been dismissed from all of his roles, and forbade employees from engaging with him.
Wu further revealed an ugly power struggle between him and Zhan during Bitmain’s all-hands meeting on Tuesday last week following the initial email to the staff. Zhan did not immediately issue any statement or respond to requests for comment from multiple media outlets, including CoinDesk.
But in Wednesday’s statement, Zhan said he was ousted from the company without any consent or prior knowledge, and he plans to resolve the issue through legal methods. He will take Bitmain on in court if needed.
“I have never thought that as a person focusing on technology and product, I have to start thinking from legal perspectives. It was embarrassing that as a Bitmain co-founder, the biggest shareholder, and a registered legal representative, I got ousted without any knowledge in this coup while on a business trip”, he wrote, adding:
“I didn’t realize until then that those scenes in TV shows, where you get stabbed on your back by those partners you trusted and ‘brothers’ you fought together with, can really happen in real life.”
While the letter did not state whom it’s specifically addressing, Zhan told Bitmain staffers and shareholders to be assured that he will “return to the company as soon as possible through legal methods to end this very critical moment.”
“Bitmain is our child. I will fight for her till the end with legal weapons. I won’t allow those who want to plot against Bitmain to succeed. If someone wants a war, we will give them one”, he said.
He further added he envisions Bitmain reaching the goal of dominating 90 percent of the bitcoin mining equipment market while expanding its AI business.
