“Fluffypony” Steps Down as Lead Monero Maintainer

The lead maintainer of privacy-oriented digital currency Monero, Riccardo “Fluffypony” Spagni, is stepping down from his position.

Announced by the core team of the crypto project on Monday, Fluffypony stepped down from the position after leading the project for five years, since its inception in 2014.

His responsibilities in the project will be transferred to Snipa. However, Fluffypony will continue his involvement with Monero as a backup maintainer.

A vocal figure in the crypto industry

“Fluffypony has served the Monero project well over its five years of existence, and he will continue to remain active in the community as a maintainer,” the announcement stated.

Though Spagni earlier revealed his exhaustion working for the crypto project, the reason for his abrupt stepping down is not known yet.

“I was the lead maintainer across all the projects, and at some point last year I was like: I can’t do this,” he told Coindesk last year. “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.”

Fluffypony’s replacement is not new to Monero, as Snipa is one of the long-time contributors to the privacy-coin project. In the Monero community, he is known for developing a popular piece of Monero pool software and supporting the network with well-connected nodes.

Meanwhile, Luigi1111 will continue as a backup maintainer of the CLI repository. Both Snipa and Fluffypony will be available as backup CLI release engineers of the project, the announcement detailed.

“BinaryFate will become the backup for control of the various core Monero domains, in addition to Fluffypony. Domain changes are rare, and mostly consists of renewing the domains when necessary,” Monero’s core team added.

Monero is known for its privacy features, and because of this quality, it has become very popular among cybercriminals. Due to these concerns, multiple crypto exchanges, including OKEx and BitBay, delisted the digital currency.