Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike is stepping down as CEO

Over the past few months, Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike spoke to candidates who could potentially take on his role as CEO of the company. This is what Marlinspike discovered in fast about stepping down from his role over the next month, where he talked about struggling to do almost everything himself before the Signal Foundation formed four years ago. The foundation funded $ 50 million for the encrypted messaging app from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, giving Signal the money it needs to be able to hire people and expand.

Before he had access to funding, Marlinspike said he wrote all the code for Android and the server, making it easy to develop all the products and solving problems the service might have had on its own. Now, he said, Signal is a group of 30 people, each with their own role, and he can turn off his phone without worrying that the service will implode. “In other words, after a decade or more, it’s hard to overestimate how important Signal is to me, but now I feel very comfortable replacing myself as CEO based on the team we have, and I also believe it’s an important step to spread about Signal’s success.” he wrote.

Marlinspike will remain on the signal board and will focus on finding the next CEO for the service over the next month. For now, Acton will serve as interim executive director. Although he spoke of the move as a step towards expanding Signal, he did not say exactly why he was leaving his role. TechCrunch believes this could have something to do with MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency that is integrated into Signal and allows users to send each other digital coins via the app. It’s also unclear what Marlinspike is doing next, just revealing on Twitter to “get some rest”.