Dobson is the second developer to leave Bitcoin Core in the past two months.

Programmer Samuel Dobson announced via a series of tweets on Thursday evening that he is stepping down after 3 years as a Bitcoin Core supervisor. His apology was that he could “no longer take the necessary time because I was about to finish my doctorate”.

I am officially stepping down as the Bitcoin Main Maintainer.

Working as a wallet maintainer for the past three years has been an absolute privilege and I would like to thank my incredibly generous sponsor John Pfeffer (@jlppfeffer) for his continued support. / First

– Samuel Dobson (@meshcollider) December 9, 2021

As the Bitcoin Core wallet maintainer, Dobson has direct access to the cryptocurrency’s code on GitHub, with the power to approve changes and make improvements to the Bitcoin software. He is also responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of the protocol.

When asked if there was any way to return to BTC core development some day, Dobson told Cointelegraph that his PhD was currently his primary focus. And although he has not yet decided what to do after graduating, he is not interested in the development of other cryptocurrencies.

Dobson said he was particularly grateful for the support of “extremely generous donor” John Pfeffer, without whose support he would not be able to prioritize part-time work at Bitcoin.

He urged the Twitter community to consider funding a developer due to the nature of open source projects. He also told Cointelegraph:

“Bitcoin Core’s evolution has clearly grown tremendously since it was traced back to Satoshi. As an open source project, it will always be in an interesting and challenging position in terms of funding, but things like Brink, Chaincode, Spiral, and the direct developer funding through GitHub helped a lot. ”

Bitcoin has lost two supervisors since October, and with Dobson’s departure, the number of developers with direct access to the Bitcoin code has fallen to five, according to an updated list in the Bitcoin forums.