Peter Todd Will Lead MARA Slipstream

A longtime Bitcoin developer is taking over a service that hands transactions straight to one mining pool. Peter Todd MARA Slipstream October 2026 is the appointment. On 1 October 2026 MARA Foundation said Peter Todd, a Bitcoin Core contributor, joined as lead maintainer of Slipstream. His stated aim is to use Slipstream as a proving ground for experimental development and protocol innovation. The job is maintenance of a submission path. It is not, in these accounts, a change to Bitcoin's consensus rules.

What happened

Slipstream submits transactions directly to MARA Pool. It does not broadcast them on Bitcoin's public peer-to-peer network until they are confirmed. In the ordinary path, an unconfirmed transaction is relayed from node to node so that many miners can see it and so that anyone watching the public network can see it too. Direct submission skips that public relay until the transaction is already in a block. The privacy and the policy consequence are the same fact seen twice. The network does not carry the unconfirmed transaction, and miners outside that pool do not see it through the public relay.

The service has been used for non-standard transactions, including large Ordinals inscriptions in 2024. A non-standard transaction is one that ordinary relay rules may refuse even if the consensus rules would accept it once mined. Inscriptions, in the Ordinals method, attach data to a bitcoin transaction. "Large" is the adjective the accounts use for the 2024 cases. This article does not add a byte size. The point of the example is use: Slipstream has been a way to get non-standard transactions into MARA Pool without first surviving public relay.

It has also been used for research. Quantum Safe Bitcoin is one named effort. Binohash is another. Binohash is described as a way to emulate covenants without a soft fork. A covenant is a constraint on how coins may be spent later. A soft fork is a tightening of the consensus rules that nodes enforce. Emulating covenants without a soft fork means seeking a similar effect without changing those rules. That is the description given. It is not a result this article is scoring, and it is not a claim that Bitcoin now has covenants.

Slipstream was also used after the July 2026 Coldcard firmware exploit, so that key material was not exposed before confirmation. The stated purpose is timing. Material that would be visible if the transaction sat in public before it was mined was instead held off the public network until confirmation. This article does not describe the exploit itself. It reports the use the accounts give: keeping key material from being exposed early.

Todd's record, as stated, is specific. He is a Bitcoin Core contributor. He co-wrote BIP 125. He created OpenTimestamps. In 2024 he released Libre Relay. The shared facts name those works. They do not set out the text of BIP 125, the design of OpenTimestamps, or the policy Libre Relay applies. What the appointment adds is the maintainer role at Slipstream, announced by MARA Foundation on 1 October 2026. Lead maintainer is an engineering job on that service. It is not a seat on a standards body, and it is not described as control of MARA Pool's ordinary block template.

His stated aim is to use the service as a proving ground for experimental development and protocol innovation. A proving ground is a place to try things. The sentence is his aim, not a list of experiments already chosen, and not a promise that any experiment will become a consensus change. This article uses that aim as he stated it and does not extend it.

Why it matters

Public relay is a default, not a law of physics. Bitcoin's peer-to-peer network is how most unconfirmed transactions become visible. A path that withholds them until confirmation changes who learns about the transaction, and when. The sender gives it to MARA Pool. Everyone else sees it, if they see it through this path, once it is confirmed. That can be useful for a non-standard transaction the public network would drop. It can also be useful when early exposure is itself the risk, which is the reason given for the Coldcard use in July 2026. The same design has a cost. A transaction that is not publicly relayed is a transaction other miners do not have a chance to include through the public network, and other observers cannot see it in advance.

Nothing in the appointment changes what a confirmed Bitcoin transaction is. A transaction mined into a block is public at confirmation whether or not it was public before. Slipstream delays broadcast. It does not erase the confirmed record. Readers who treat direct submission as anonymity after confirmation are reading past the design the accounts describe. The hide-until-confirmed property ends at confirmation.

What's next

Todd is lead maintainer as of the 1 October 2026 announcement. The service still submits to MARA Pool and still withholds public broadcast until confirmation. His aim is experimental development and protocol innovation on that proving ground. No specific upcoming experiment is named in the facts used here, so this article will not name one.

Figures for the size of past flow are left out. The usable record is the appointment, the direct-to-pool design, the earlier uses for inscriptions, Quantum Safe Bitcoin, Binohash, and the Coldcard episode, and the aim Todd stated.

For related reporting, see the Bitget incident and the NEAR Intents exploit.

MARA Foundation's announcement is here. Bitcoin Magazine's account is here.