Peter Todd Takes Lead of MARA's Slipstream Amid Growing Interest in Private Mempools

Peter Todd, a long-time contributor to Bitcoin Core, has taken the lead of MARA's Slipstream, a service that allows users to redirect transactions to MARA Pool without going through Bitcoin's public peer-to-peer network.

Todd's background in transaction relay and fee policy makes him well-suited for the position, and he has been researching the movement of Bitcoin transactions without confirmations for a long time.

Slipstream was introduced by MARA in February 2024 for processing large or non-standard transactions, and it allows users to bypass the normal functioning of a relay path.

Todd pointed to Slipstream as a way to reduce the risk of transaction exposure during the Coldcard hack, where a recovery transaction could remain unconfirmed long enough for an attacker to see it and try to create a competing transaction with a higher fee.

Slipstream has also worked on experimental transactions, including StarkWare's first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction, which reached mainnet via Slipstream after failing to go through the standard mempool route.