Todd Takes Helm at MARA's Slipstream, a Hub for Bitcoin Innovation

Peter Todd, a Bitcoin Core developer with a long history in the space, has joined the MARA Foundation to oversee its private mempool service, Slipstream. The service, which allows users to bypass Bitcoin's public peer-to-peer relay network and send transactions directly to MARA's mining pool, has gained attention for handling non-standard transactions, including large Ordinals inscriptions and certain BitVM-related experiments. Todd has been a proponent of relaxating relay-policy restrictions and has argued that bitcoin mining and relay policies should reflect market demand.

Slipstream has become a crucial infrastructure for Bitcoin research and development, with projects like quantum-resistant Bitcoin transactions and Binohash, a proposed method for emulating covenants without a soft fork, utilizing the service. The service also offers a feature that limits the exposure of transaction data, which drew attention during the response to the Coldcard firmware vulnerability. Over 10,000 BTC has been transferred from affected wallets using Slipstream.

Todd has denied being the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, despite being accused in a documentary and having some similarities with the creator's style and writing. He expressed his enthusiasm for using Slipstream as a proving ground for experimental development and protocol innovation.