Several people have asked about the future of CLN without me at the helm. It's a worthy question, but not one I'm concerned about.
One of my key responsibilities at Blockstream was to build up a team to support CLN development and usage. I've done that, and there's no critical dependency on me any more. I expect new developments to slow for a year while the team fills gaps, but users probably won't notice, because CLN is entering a phase of refinement, not radical change.
Most of the exciting change happens one layer up now: plugins are really coming into their own, and daywalker90 has plans to rewrite reckless as a "one stop shop" plugin manager, which should really boost the ecosystem. Its telling that my last two big efforts in CLN have been in plugins: payer proofs and repeatpay are both in plugins (coming in 26.09!).
I also have 2400 branches in my git tree; I'll have scripts and an LLM churn through them all looking for the unfinished/unmerged ones to decide how many are worth exposing to the world for others to finish.
Software is never finished, but this is not my first time handing over major FOSS projects I've founded: I consider that doing that well is a key part of maintenance.
My team is ready, and they will continue to make me proud!
Rusty Russell
npub179…elz4s
2026-05-15 23:19:22 UTC
Author Public Key
npub179e9tp4yqtqx4myp35283fz64gxuzmr6n3yxnktux5pnd5t03eps0elz4sPublished at
2026-05-15 23:19:22 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Several people have asked about the future of CLN without me at the helm. It's a worthy question, but not one I'm concerned about.\n\nOne of my key responsibilities at Blockstream was to build up a team to support CLN development and usage. I've done that, and there's no critical dependency on me any more. I expect new developments to slow for a year while the team fills gaps, but users probably won't notice, because CLN is entering a phase of refinement, not radical change.\n\nMost of the exciting change happens one layer up now: plugins are really coming into their own, and daywalker90 has plans to rewrite reckless as a \"one stop shop\" plugin manager, which should really boost the ecosystem. Its telling that my last two big efforts in CLN have been in plugins: payer proofs and repeatpay are both in plugins (coming in 26.09!). \n\nI also have 2400 branches in my git tree; I'll have scripts and an LLM churn through them all looking for the unfinished/unmerged ones to decide how many are worth exposing to the world for others to finish.\n\nSoftware is never finished, but this is not my first time handing over major FOSS projects I've founded: I consider that doing that well is a key part of maintenance. \n\nMy team is ready, and they will continue to make me proud! ",
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