Bitcoin Core Adds Sixth Trusted Key Maintainer After Three-Year Wait

TLDR:

• TheCharlatan joins Bitcoin Core as the sixth trusted key holder, the first addition since the May 2023 expansion.
• At least 20 Bitcoin Core contributors supported the promotion with zero objections during the nomination process.
• The South African developer specializes in reproducibility and validation logic for Bitcoin Core software.
• Bitcoin Core’s governance evolved from Satoshi’s sole control to the current six-person maintainer structure.

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Bitcoin Core has expanded its elite group of Trusted Keys maintainers for the first time since May 2023. The pseudonymous developer TheCharlatan, also known as “sedited,” received commit access to the master branch on January 8, 2026. 

This promotion brings the total number of keyholders to six, marking a significant milestone in the project’s decentralized governance structure.

TheCharlatan Joins Elite Group of Core Maintainers

TheCharlatan now stands alongside five existing Trusted Key holders with commit power to Bitcoin Core. Marco Falke, Gloria Zhao, Ryan Ofsky, Hennadii Stepanov, and Ava Chow comprise the other members of this group. 

The appointment process required consensus from the Bitcoin Core development community, with at least 20 members supporting the decision.

The nomination received unanimous support from contributors in a group chat discussion. The nomination statement described TheCharlatan as “a reliable reviewer who has worked extensively in critical areas of the codebase.” 

It further noted that he “thinks carefully about what we ship to users and developers and understands the technical consensus process well.” No objections arose during the nomination process, demonstrating broad support for his promotion.

Bitcoin Core’s 25-member GitHub development community maintains strict controls over commit access. 

Only these six PGP keys can approve changes to the software’s master branch. Developers sign all software updates with their PGP keys, ensuring authenticity and security.

Technical Contributions and Development History

TheCharlatan holds a computer science degree from the University of Zurich. The South African developer specializes in reproducibility and validation logic within Bitcoin Core. His work focuses on ensuring independently-verifiable paths from source to binary code.

His contributions to validation logic build upon Carl Dong’s work on the Bitcoin Core kernel library. This effort aims to separate validating and non-validating logic used to determine blockchain extensions. 

The work helps streamline the process of verifying whether new blocks extend the current best-work chain.

The history of Bitcoin Core’s commit access reflects the project’s evolution toward decentralization. Satoshi Nakamoto initially held sole commit privileges when Bitcoin launched in 2009. 

Control later transferred to Gavin Andresen, then to Wladimir van der Laan. Legal threats from Craig Wright prompted van der Laan to decentralize commit access among multiple maintainers. 

Wright subsequently lost his court battles over copyright claims to Bitcoin’s whitepaper. The current six-person structure emerged from that initiative and represents the standard governance model for Core development today.

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