b10c

Yes! Will be on umbrel eventually. Currently needs a Bitcoin Core build from the master branch. The features use should be in the upcoming release. Then Umbrel!

I've build a tool to detect differences between _my local_ mempool and what miners include in their block (there will always be slight differences). This is primarily intended to detect censorship, but can also detect transactions that never entered _my_ mempool.

See https://miningpool.observer

There is no single leader in Bitcoin.

The "stepping back", as mentioned in the title, doesn't summarize what's happening here. laanwj decided to delegate some of his lead maintainer tasks to others with aim to further improve the decentralization and reducing the attack surface. He want to continue to work on Bitcoin an Bitcoin Core.

Most recently, this became relevant as the bitcoincore.org website he (co-)maintains received a legal letter from a (fraudulent; as in unproven and repeatedly lying) entity claiming copyright of the 2008 Bitcoin whitepaper. He complied[0] by taking the PDF down from bitcoincore.org and received a lot of slack for it by parts of the community. He then made clear that he'll happily continue to work on Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin in general, but will not be a "martyr"[1] for the project: "it's up to you as bitcoiners to protect it". As a reaction a lot of community members and companies proceeded to host the PDF on their site [2].

[0]: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoincore.org/pull/740

[1]: https://twitter.com/orionwl/status/1352181235766988800

[2]: https://twitter.com/hashtag/BitcoinPDF