Wladimir (Mara) van der Laan
Bitcoin Core's lead maintainer from 2014 under the name Wladimir van der Laan, chosen by Gavin Andresen; began handing off the role in 2021 and gave up merge rights in 2023. The laanwj profile now shows the name Mara van der Laan.
The wiki's angle: the person who held Bitcoin Core's release keys through the whole block size war wrote, in 2021, that being a central bottleneck was the problem. The blog reads as a running record of what Craig Wright's lawsuits cost developers, ending with relief at the COPA ruling.[3][7]
Name
This article uses two names by period. For 2011 to 2024, the years in which the cited sources were published under the name Wladimir van der Laan, it uses that name[1]. For the period after the name change it uses Mara van der Laan, the name the laanwj GitHub profile shows as of 13 November 2026, with the bio “former bitcoin maintainer”[2]. The date of the change is not sourced and is marked unknown; the article avoids pronouns[2].
Maintainer
The Bitcoin Wiki says that on 7 April 2014 Gavin Andresen stepped down as Bitcoin Core maintainer and nominated Wladimir van der Laan as successor[1]. In 2021 Wladimir van der Laan wrote of contributing to Bitcoin since 2011 and of a project that had grown into “a 600 billion dollar system”[3]. In 2018 the Bitcoin Core disclosure of CVE-2018-17144 listed Wladimir van der Laan among the developers who received the first report[4].
Decentralising the role
In “The widening gyre” (21 January 2021) Wladimir van der Laan wrote “I realize I am myself somewhat of a centralized bottleneck” and planned to delegate tasks: move bitcoincore.org to an organisation, decentralise release signing, rename the release key, and look beyond GitHub[3]. The post noted that van der Laan had made only about 24% of 2020's merges[3]. The Bitcoin Wiki says van der Laan then stepped down gradually and in February 2023 removed the account's own merge privileges in pull request #27054[1].
Craig Wright
In May 2016 Wladimir van der Laan wrote of a project in which attacks were “agitated by someone that purports to be part of your own project” and of the need to break ties with individuals seen as “a toxic influence”[5]. In February 2023 the post “Of regrets” said of the MIT license's no-warranty clause that it “apparently doesn't hold up in court (at least in the UK)”[6]. On 19 March 2024 “Finally” quoted the judge's declarations that Craig Wright is not Satoshi; the post itself called him “a fraud” and said van der Laan's first post about him dated from 2016, “back when Gavin fell under his influence”[7].
Today
As Mara van der Laan, the laanwj GitHub profile describes a “former bitcoin maintainer”[2]. This wiki has no sourced account of activity under that name beyond the profile[2].
References
- secondaryBitcoin Wiki, “Wladimir van der Laan” (revision 70532) [archived]
- primaryGitHub profile of laanwj, read 13 Nov 2026 [archived]
- primarylaanwj, “The widening gyre”, Laanwj's blog, 21 Jan 2021 [archived]
- primaryBitcoin Core, “Disclosure of CVE-2018-17144” (20 Sep 2018) [archived]
- primarylaanwj, “Dazed and confused, but trying to continue”, Laanwj's blog, 6 May 2016 [archived]
- primarylaanwj, “Of regrets”, Laanwj's blog, 6 Feb 2023 [archived]
- primarylaanwj, “Finally”, Laanwj's blog, 19 Mar 2024 [archived]