The developer with the most changes to Bitcoin’s code has announced his decision to step down from the Core maintainer role.

Bitcoin Core maintainer Marco Falke has announced he will step down from the role.

The prolific Bitcoin developer took to Twitter on Tuesday, saying that, “In a challenging decision, I concluded to transition out of my role as maintainer. I remain passionate about open source and Bitcoin and I am positive about the future, however being a maintainer is no longer a good fit for me personally.”

Falke also took the time to thank his sponsors. His latest funding support came from a joint grant by Okcoin and Paradigm.

Falke was an incredibly active participant in the Bitcoin development process, notably having merged more changes into the Bitcoin Core code than any other person. Bitcoin Magazine previously covered the daily work of Falke as a Bitcoin Core repository maintainer, including his rise to become the most prolific Core Developer in terms of the sheer number of individual changes submitted to the project.

Falke’s contributions around testing infrastructure have been the most substantive, which he identified early on as an inefficiency in the project that he was passionate about improving, as testing is critical for ensuring continuity across the network and improving quality assurance.

With Falke’s departure, there will now be only four official Bitcoin Core maintainers. While these roles are incredibly important, it is also important to note that they do not officially control Bitcoin — Bitcoin users running full nodes must opt-in to the code changes that Bitcoin Core maintainers approve, adding a layer of checks and balances to the protocol.