As a burnt out creator of open source projects with thousands of GitHub stars who's received numerous questionable maintainership requests: either very carefull

As a burnt out creator of open source projects with thousands of GitHub stars who's received numerous questionable maintainership requests: either very carefully vet people or let it stagnate. I chose the latter and just waited until others forked it, in large part because I didn't want to be responsible for someone hijacking the project to spread malware. If I had ever received a request from a well-known figure with a longstanding reputation, who's appeared in-person at talks and has verifiable employment, I might've been more receptive. But all the requests I got were from random internet identities that easily could've been fabricated, and in any case had no previous reputation. "Jia Tan" and their other sockpuppets very likely are not their real identities.