Ava Chow (known as achow101) is a maintainer of Bitcoin Core, the reference implementation of the Bitcoin protocol.
Bitcoin Core
Chow has been contributing to Bitcoin Core since 2016 and is one of the project’s most prolific contributors. Her primary focus is Bitcoin Core’s wallet code, where she has led the development and migration to descriptor wallets — a modern wallet architecture that uses output descriptors to define how keys and scripts are derived, replacing the older legacy wallet format.
She was granted commit access to the Bitcoin Core repository as part of the transition to distributed maintainership after Wladimir van der Laan stepped down in 2022.
Other Contributions
Chow authored the Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction (PSBT) specification (BIP 174), which defines a standard format for unsigned and partially signed Bitcoin transactions. PSBT is essential for hardware wallet interoperability, multi-signature workflows, and CoinJoin transactions. She has also contributed to Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI) tooling.
Funding
Chow’s work is supported by Brink, a non-profit organization dedicated to funding Bitcoin open-source developers.
Related people
Bitcoin Core
Brink