Monero’s Fluffypony steps down

According to an announcement made Monday, Fluffypony (Riccardo Spagni) will step down from his position as the lead maintainer of Monero. He will be replaced by Monero developer Snipa, and will continue as a backup maintainer in needed moving forward. In a statement provided to Decrypt, Fluffypony expressed that “I’m stepping back as lead maintainer, but continuing on as a maintainer, to further decentralise the project… I've been talking about doing this for two years, since I stepped back as lead maintainer on the Monero website and Monero GUI projects, so it should come as no surprise.” Looking ahead Fluffypony plans to focus more on the broader Monero and privacy ecosystem, specifically focusing on the Tari project, a merged-mined sidechain for digital asset issuance.

Why it matters:

• The announcement highlights an important milestone that every project will need to reach as they march down the path towards decentralization. Unlike Bitcoin which had the benefit of having an anonymous founder who stepped back early in the project’s life, nearly every other project was founded by known individuals who continue to steward their projects. If these projects are to become truly decentralized, founders will need to reduce their political influence over the project as the project grows.
• Decentralization is not just a lofty ideal. Decentralized networks find their strength and resilience from political and architectural decentralization. It is these properties that allow decentralized networks to operate without being censored or controlled by powerful third parties. As Satoshi stated in an email responding to feedback on their whitepaper “Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.”