Veteran Bitcoin Core contributor Peter Todd has joined the MARA Foundation as lead maintainer of Slipstream, the organization’s private Bitcoin mempool service for submitting transactions directly to MARA Pool.
Bitcoin Core Dev Peter Todd to Oversee MARA's Private Mempool Service
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Key Takeaways
- Peter Todd is joining MARA Foundation to lead Slipstream, MARA’s private Bitcoin transaction-submission service.
- Slipstream’s private submission model was recently used to move funds from wallets affected by the Coldcard vulnerability.
- Todd is a longtime Bitcoin developer and advocate for permissive relay policies, known for Libre Relay, BIP 125 and OpenTimestamps.
Todd Joins MARA Foundation
Slipstream allows users to bypass Bitcoin’s public peer-to-peer relay network and send transactions straight to MARA’s mining pool. The service has become known for handling transactions that fall outside standard Bitcoin relay policies, including large Ordinals inscriptions and certain transaction formats used in BitVM-related experiments.
More recently, MARA—a prominent, publicly traded bitcoin mining firm—has positioned Slipstream as infrastructure for Bitcoin research and development. Projects using the service have included work on quantum-resistant Bitcoin transactions and Binohash, a proposed method for emulating covenants without requiring a Bitcoin soft fork.
Because transactions submitted through Slipstream are not broadcast to Bitcoin’s public network before confirmation, the service can also limit the exposure of transaction data.
That feature drew attention during the response to the recent Coldcard firmware vulnerability, when some multisig users used Slipstream while moving funds from affected wallets. MARA said more than 10,000 BTC has been transferred from impacted wallets using the service.
A Long Bitcoin History—But Not Satoshi
Todd previously created Libre Relay, an open-source Bitcoin Core fork launched in 2024 that relaxes relay-policy restrictions on some non-standard transactions. He is also a longtime advocate of replace-by-fee, co-author of BIP 125 and creator of OpenTimestamps.
Todd has argued that bitcoin mining and relay policies should reflect market demand rather than impose unnecessary restrictions on transaction types.
“I most look forward to seeing what’s possible on Bitcoin—using Slipstream as a proving ground for experimental development and protocol innovation,” Todd said, in a statement.
Todd is also one of the many early Bitcoin developers and users that has been accused of being the man behind the moniker of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. In 2024, HBO’s “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” documentary fingered Todd as Satoshi, based on clues from a forum post, his writing style, and other potential indicators.
However, Todd has consistently denied being the creator of the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, writing simply on X in 2024, “I’m not Satoshi.”
