Author|Golem(@web 3_golem)
On January 8, the Bitcoin Core team promoted developer TheCharlatan (X: @sedited) to core maintainer, making him the sixth member to hold trusted keys. The other five trusted key holders include: Marco Falke (promoted in 2016), Gloria Zhao (promoted in 2022), Ryan Ofsky (promoted in 2023), Hennadii Stepanov (promoted in 2021), and Ava Chow (promoted in 2021).
This appointment marks the first addition of a trusted key holder since 2023. Over the past decade, only 13 people have been granted this permission, highlighting its importance and the strictness of the selection process.
Bitcoin Core Maintainers: The "Editors" of Bitcoin Developers
Bitcoin Core is currently the primary development and maintenance team for the Bitcoin mainnet. It is responsible for writing, maintaining, testing, and releasing the software used by most full nodes, along with accompanying tools and documentation. Bitcoin Core is a non-profit organization, primarily funded by external companies.
The Bitcoin Core development team consists of 41 members who contribute the vast majority of the project's code. Among them, only 6 developers are granted the title of "Maintainer"—they are the only six people in the world with the authority to merge code into Bitcoin Core and sign the released program files (binaries).
Signatures of the 6 core maintainers
To draw an analogy, Bitcoin Core maintainers are like the "editors" of the Bitcoin network developers; anyone can contribute code and submit PRs to the codebase, but only the core maintainers have the authority to merge code into the official repository and sign releases. This is similar to how editors review manuscripts, deciding whether developers' code will be accepted and published or returned for modifications.
The signatures of Bitcoin Core maintainers ensure security, giving all nodes and users confidence that the release is "official and unaltered." However, Bitcoin Core maintainers do not have the direct power to trigger changes to on-chain rules. For example, even if Bitcoin Core maintainers have signed and released program files for a soft fork or hard fork of the Bitcoin network, the success of the upgrade ultimately depends on adoption and consensus from users and miners, not just the signatures of the maintainers.
When Bitcoin was first created, Satoshi Nakamoto was the sole core maintainer, with exclusive authority to change the core codebase. Later, Satoshi passed this privilege to Gavin Andresen, who then passed it to Wladimir van der Laan. This means that for a long time, the power to maintain/change the Bitcoin network code was held by a single individual. It wasn't until 2022, when Wladimir van der Laan stepped down and became embroiled in litigation with Craig Wright (who claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto), that this power began to be decentralized.
Even so, Bitcoin Core maintainers still play a crucial role. Those who become maintainers typically enjoy high levels of trust and reputation within the community or have made outstanding contributions to the Bitcoin network.
For example, one of the core maintainers, Ava Chow, is a transgender female developer. In 2024, when Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr proposed restricting Ordinals transactions at the consensus level, it was Ava Chow who rejected the PR on the grounds of "lack of consensus and creating noise," preventing a potential severe split in the Bitcoin network consensus and becoming an unsung hero.
Ava Chow attended the Bitcoin 2024 event
For introductions and contributions of other core maintainers, refer to a previous article(Related reading:Who is guarding Satoshi's legacy? A look at the 41-person army behind Bitcoin's trillion-dollar market cap). Next, we will introduce why TheCharlatan became the sixth core maintainer.
TheCharlatan: A Decade of Experience in Crypto Development
TheCharlatan graduated from the University of Zurich with a degree in computer science. He is South African and focuses on reproducibility and the validation logic of Bitcoin Core. In a 2024 blog post, he claimed to have been developing this project for over two years. TheCharlatan's work involves systematically splitting, organizing, and modularizing Bitcoin Core's validation logic, enabling other users to safely reuse it.
TheCharlatan
TheCharlatan is widely respected among Bitcoin Core developers. During the process of promoting him to core maintainer, at least 20 members expressed their approval. When nominating him, glozow praised: "He is a reliable reviewer with extensive experience in key areas of the codebase, thoughtful about what we deliver to users and developers, and very familiar with the technical consensus process."
Bitcoin Core core developer group chat content (translated)
According to his GitHub account information, TheCharlatan first started crypto development in 2015 by creating a cryptocurrency price display tool. This tool was a simple Linux desktop widget with built-in price alert functionality that would trigger when set thresholds were reached. His crypto development activities became more frequent after 2017. He began contributing code to Bitcoin Core in 2018, indicating that TheCharlatan first encountered Bitcoin Core about 8 years ago, making him a veteran.
It is also worth noting that in 2021-2022, TheCharlatan contributed to a Farcaster project codebase. This project allowed people to exchange Bitcoin and Monero peer-to-peer with anyone running a Farcaster node.
TheCharlatan indeed has a "soft spot" for Monero. In 2020, he researched the potential destruction issues that could arise from using hardware wallets to transfer Monero and explored time-lock vulnerabilities in Monero.
Of course, true tech geeks can be somewhat elusive. TheCharlatan frequently retweets technical posts on platform X but rarely expresses his own opinions (in May 2025, he posted that he dislikes NFTs even more). However, since June 2025, he has been repeating a tweet every month with the content: "Cash on the internet. No auto-updates."
I was afraid this might be some kind of secret code among Bitcoin tech geeks or a cultural slogan I wasn't aware of, so I asked AI to explain the meaning of these two sentences. The AI said these two phrases actually express an extreme Bitcoin maximalist view:
"True internet-native cash should be as simple, brutal, and immutable as physical cash. Once you start introducing automatic updates, governance votes, and frequent rule changes, it's no longer cash; it becomes another centralized/semi-centralized/manipulable 'digital bank account.'"
