Bitcoin Core Loses Trusted Signer: Gloria Zhao Revokes PGP Key and Steps Down
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Bitcoin Core Loses Trusted Signer: Gloria Zhao Revokes PGP Key and Steps Down



Headline: Bitcoin Core loses a key maintainer — Gloria Zhao revokes PGP key and steps down

Bitcoin Core maintainer Gloria Zhao has revoked her PGP signing key and confirmed she is stepping down, according to a Feb. 5 notice on her GitHub profile — a development that marks the end of a six‑year run of mempool and transaction‑relay work that materially shaped Bitcoin’s transaction policy.

Why this matters
Bitcoin Core maintainers not only review and merge code, they also sign official releases with cryptographic keys. Revoking a PGP key removes a maintainer’s ability to sign releases and is the canonical signal of departure from the maintainer role. Zhao’s exit is therefore a tangible change in the small group that stewards Bitcoin Core development and release security.

A track record focused on mempool and transaction relay
Zhao joined Brink (a non‑profit supported by the Human Rights Foundation and Spiral) in January 2021. Her PGP key was added to Bitcoin Core’s trusted‑keys file on July 7, 2022 — the same moment Pieter Wuille stepped down — and Bitcoin Core records indicate she was the first woman known to hold a maintainer slot, appointed by community consensus.

Her specialty was transaction‑layer work: mempool policy, transaction relay and fee estimation. Over years she authored and reviewed changes aimed at reducing relay inefficiencies and censorship vectors, contributing to efforts such as package relay (BIP 331), TRUC (BIP 431), RBF improvements and peer‑to‑peer protocol tweaks. Zhao contributed hundreds of commits, actively reviewed pull requests and regularly participated in the Bitcoin Core PR Review Club.

Activity and recognition
Zhao began contributing to Bitcoin Core in 2020. By August 2025, GitHub data showed she had made 837 contributions in the prior year across Bitcoin/bitcoin and related repositories. In January 2025 Brink publicly celebrated her four years of full‑time work on Bitcoin Core.

What’s next
Her PGP key revocation creates a vacancy among the maintainers responsible for signing releases and gatekeeping critical changes. The Bitcoin Core project has a long history of community‑driven transitions, but any change among trusted signers draws attention because of the role those keys play in release authenticity and developer trust.

We’ll watch for formal updates from the Bitcoin Core project about who will assume signing responsibilities and how the maintainer roster will be adjusted.

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