Peter Todd joins MARA to lead the private memory pool Slipstream

Bitcoin Core contributor Peter Todd has joined the MARA Foundation as the chief maintainer of Slipstream. Slipstream is MARA's private Bitcoin mempool service, and the foundation announced this appointment on Thursday. Todd will be responsible for the development and operation of this service.

Slipstream allows users to send Bitcoin transactions directly to the MARA Pool without going through the public Bitcoin peer-to-peer network. Since transactions sent via Slipstream remain private before block confirmation, this service helps to conceal key information before confirmation, avoiding the exposure of public keys. The service played a role after hackers exploited a vulnerability in the Coldcard hardware wallet to steal over $115 million in user funds in July this year.

MARA's Slipstream first gained attention in 2024 for releasing large Ordinals inscriptions and has recently been used in research projects such as Quantum Safe Bitcoin and Binohash. Todd is a long-time Bitcoin Core contributor, co-author of BIP 125 (replace-by-fee), creator of OpenTimestamps, and launched Libre Relay in 2024. He believes that mempool policies should follow what the market wants miners to package, rather than restricting how people use Bitcoin.