Bitcoin Core has expanded its circle of trusted code maintainers, adding a sixth keyholder with direct commit access to the project’s master branch — marking the first such addition since May 2023. The move highlights ongoing efforts to further decentralize stewardship of Bitcoin’s most widely used node software.
The newest maintainer is a pseudonymous developer known as “TheCharlatan” (also referred to as “sedited”), who was officially granted Trusted Key status on January 8, 2026. With this step, they join existing maintainers Marco Falke, Gloria Zhao, Ryan Ofsky, Hennadii Stepanov, and Ava Chow as part of the small group with the ability to directly commit changes to the codebase.
Bitcoin Core’s Trusted Key group has changed gradually over the past decade. Falke received commit access in 2016, followed by Samuel Dobson in 2018 (who later stepped down in 2022). Stepanov and Chow joined in 2021, Zhao in 2022, and Ofsky in 2023. Today, six PGP keys are officially recognized for commit access by the roughly 25 active developers contributing to Bitcoin Core on GitHub. Developers sign releases and updates with their personal PGP keys, helping ensure software integrity and authenticity.
The promotion of TheCharlatan came after strong backing in a community discussion among contributors, where at least 20 developers voiced support and no objections were recorded. Supporters described him as a dependable reviewer working in “critical areas of the codebase” with a solid grasp of how consensus and release processes function.
According to his public development profile, TheCharlatan is a University of Zurich computer science graduate from South Africa. His work has focused heavily on reproducible builds and validation logic within Bitcoin Core. Reproducible builds allow third parties to independently verify that the compiled software exactly matches the published source code, which is essential for security in open-source financial systems. His contributions to validation logic continue earlier efforts by developer Carl Dong to separate validating and non-validating components inside Bitcoin Core’s kernel library — work that helps determine whether blocks properly extend Bitcoin’s best-work chain.
Control of Bitcoin Core has become progressively more decentralized over time. When Bitcoin launched in 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto alone held commit access. Those permissions later passed to Gavin Andresen and then to Wladimir van der Laan, who led a shift toward distributing control among multiple maintainers. That transition accelerated after legal threats from Craig Wright, who went on to lose a series of court cases related to copyright claims over the Bitcoin whitepaper. Today, instead of one figure at the center, a small, trusted group collectively oversees the project.
The addition of TheCharlatan is being viewed as part of that continuing evolution — another step toward spreading responsibility across experienced contributors while maintaining rigorous review standards for Bitcoin’s most critical software.
Also Read: FATF Highlights T3 FCU as Rising Force Against Crypto Crime
