Monero's lead maintainer ‘Fluffypony’ steps down after 5 years of heading the project
Riccardo “Fluffypony” Spagni, the lead maintainer of privacy-oriented cryptocurrency monero (XMR), has stepped down.
Fluffypony led the monero project since its launch in 2014 and will now continue as a backup maintainer, according to an announcement Monday. Snipa, a “longtime” contributor to Monero, is taking over Fluffypony’s role.
It is not clear why Fluffypony has resigned. The Block has reached out to him and will update this story if we hear back. Fluffypony once expressed his thoughts about quitting the project as the lead. “I was the lead maintainer across all the projects, and at some point last year I was like: I can’t do this,” Fluffypony told CoinDesk in May 2018, adding: “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.”
Indeed, Fluffypony’s other duties have also been taken over by other contributors. For instance, he won’t be in charge of approving announcement emails sent to the Monero community. He will also turn to a backup role for other tasks such as engineering, administration and server access.
The price of monero went down from ~$51 on Monday to ~$44 on Wednesday and is now trading at around $46. Other cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, also dropped during the period.
Recently, several cryptocurrency exchanges announced their decision to delist monero over compliance risks, including OKEx Korea and BitBay.
