Samuel Dobson, the core maintainer developer of bitcoin, announced on Monday through several tweets that he will no longer be working in this position. He informed me that he is leaving because he will be unable to dedicate the time needed for this job. He cited his Ph.D. coming to an end as the main reason for this decision.
Samuel Had Authority to Make Improvements in Core Bitcoin Code
As the core maintainer of bitcoin, he could access the code of bitcoin on GitHub without any restrictions. He could make improvements and approve changes in the bitcoin program. His responsibilities included protecting the protocol security of this crypto. He told Cointelegraph that presently he is focused on his Ph.D. There is no plan to get involved in developing any other cryptocurrency. He especially thanked John Pfeffer as an incredibly generous sponsor whose support made it possible for him to work part-time on bitcoin.
Financial Support to a Developer Requested
He appealed to Twitter users to financially support a developer as the open-source projects cannot be sustained without support from the community. He informed Cointelegraph that the core development of bitcoin has grown quite large from the time it was developed by Satoshi. Being open-source, it will be a difficult but interesting project funding-wise, even though programs like Spiral, Chaincode, and Brink helped him a lot. He also received support through direct sponsorship at GitHub.
Two maintainers have already left this project. After Samuel‘s departure, only five developers now have direct access to the code of bitcoin as per the list updated at Bitcoin Forum.
