GitHub has permanently banned the Rust Lightning organization with no explanation and no option to appeal, according to longtime Bitcoin Core contributor Matt Corallo.
The ban was triggered after a new contributor, Luis Schwab, had his account suspended twice within a week. Schwab said the suspensions were "by mistake." Corallo said the team escalated the issue through GitHub's corporate account managers and received no meaningful response. The entire organization was then permanently banned.
Corallo's statement: "GitHub has decided our open source project has been permanently banned with no explanation and no option to appeal, pointing to a ToS that clearly does not cover anything we've ever done." He added: "I guess it's time for Bitcoin projects to leave GitHub."
Andrew Poelstra, another senior Bitcoin Core and Rust Lightning contributor, published a detailed critique of the platform. He cited LLM generated content flooding the site, a broken merge script that had been non functional for several days, and pull request tracking that no longer works reliably. His assessment: "It's no longer more convenient to stay here than to leave, which was the only reason we've stayed so long."
Roman Storm, the Tornado Cash developer, said his GitHub account was locked in 2022 over sanctions compliance. He is a US citizen. The sanctions were later ruled unlawful and overturned. His account remains locked and GitHub no longer responds to his tickets.
The migration is already in progress. rust-bitcoin has begun moving to git.rust-bitcoin.org. Rust Lightning will follow. The destination is Forgejo, a self-hosted alternative to GitHub. The repositories are expected to eventually live entirely on independent infrastructure.
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npub1n3…ycztc
2026-06-26 01:03:56 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1n3f5skzf2x86g2wv4q2t5y8w49vehh6wrq7cyqk98w6twx2z057qmycztcSeen on
wss://nos.lolPublished at
2026-06-26 01:03:56 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "GitHub has permanently banned the Rust Lightning organization with no explanation and no option to appeal, according to longtime Bitcoin Core contributor Matt Corallo.\n\nThe ban was triggered after a new contributor, Luis Schwab, had his account suspended twice within a week. Schwab said the suspensions were \"by mistake.\" Corallo said the team escalated the issue through GitHub's corporate account managers and received no meaningful response. The entire organization was then permanently banned.\n\nCorallo's statement: \"GitHub has decided our open source project has been permanently banned with no explanation and no option to appeal, pointing to a ToS that clearly does not cover anything we've ever done.\" He added: \"I guess it's time for Bitcoin projects to leave GitHub.\"\n\nAndrew Poelstra, another senior Bitcoin Core and Rust Lightning contributor, published a detailed critique of the platform. He cited LLM generated content flooding the site, a broken merge script that had been non functional for several days, and pull request tracking that no longer works reliably. His assessment: \"It's no longer more convenient to stay here than to leave, which was the only reason we've stayed so long.\"\n\nRoman Storm, the Tornado Cash developer, said his GitHub account was locked in 2022 over sanctions compliance. He is a US citizen. The sanctions were later ruled unlawful and overturned. His account remains locked and GitHub no longer responds to his tickets.\n\nThe migration is already in progress. rust-bitcoin has begun moving to git.rust-bitcoin.org. Rust Lightning will follow. The destination is Forgejo, a self-hosted alternative to GitHub. The repositories are expected to eventually live entirely on independent infrastructure.",
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