Bitcoin Core developer Gloria Zhao has stepped down as custodian and revoked her Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) signing key, ending about six years as one of the project’s custodians.
On Thursday, Zhao introduced her last pull request to the Bitcoin GitHub repository, removing her key from trusted keys and retiring as one of the few maintainers able to update the Bitcoin software.
Becoming first known caregiver in 2022, she focused on mempool policy and transaction forwarding: the peer-to-peer rules and logic that determine which transactions enter nodes’ waiting rooms and how quickly they spread across the network.
She helped design and implement the relay package (BIP 331) and TRUC (Topologically Limited to Confirm, BIP 431), along with improvements to exchange-for-fee (RBF) and broader P2P behavior, making fee increases more reliable and reducing censorship.
Zhao’s work was financed through Brink, where she became the organization’s first Fellow in 2021, with her fellowship supported by the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Development Fund and Jack Dorsey’s Spiral (formerly Square Crypto), placing her among a compact group of publicly supported, full-time, open-source Bitcoin protocol engineers.
In addition to her technical contributions, Zhao mentored recent authors and co-led the Bitcoin Core PR Review Club, helping junior developers learn to review sophisticated changes and navigate Core’s conservative review culture.
Related: Bitcoin Core v30 error may result in loss of funds when updating an older wallet
Split into OP_RETURN and nodes
Her resignation comes after more than a year of public disputes between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots and the removal of OP_RETURN limits, an argument over whether Bitcoin’s default node software should make it tough to operate block space for non-monetary data.
In 2025, Zhao deleted her X account amid personal attacks during the OP_RETURN war, after a live broadcast in which a lead developer questioned her credentials.
While some critics of Bitcoin Core famed Zhao left, and the others took a more somber tone.
“They abused her and made her life as miserable as possible until she stopped raging and honestly, I think what they did to her was tragic,” the pseudonymous Bitcoiner told Pledditor.
Proxy in addition that he had set a “terrible precedent” and called it “sad and pathetic.”
“Congratulations on finally making it. You bullied one of Bitcoin Core’s most prolific and consistently excellent custodians until she gave up.” he said Chris Seedor, co-founder and CEO of Bitcoin wallet backup company Seedor.
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