Author | Golem (@web3_golem)

On January 8, Bitcoin Core elevated developer TheCharlatan (X: @sedited) to core maintainer, making him the sixth member to hold Trusted Keys. The other five core maintainers with Trusted Keys 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 privilege, underscoring its importance and selection rigor.

Bitcoin Core Core Maintainers: Bitcoin Developers’ “Editors”

Bitcoin Core is currently the primary development and maintenance team for the Bitcoin mainnet, responsible for writing, maintaining, testing, and releasing the software suite for most full nodes, along with supporting tools and documentation. Bitcoin Core operates on a non-profit basis, primarily funded through support from 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 hold the status of “Maintainer”—they are currently the only 6 people worldwide with the authority to merge code into Bitcoin Core and sign released binary files.

6 Core Maintainers’ Signatures

To draw an analogy, Bitcoin Core core maintainers are like “editors” for Bitcoin network developers; anyone can contribute code and submit PRs to the code repository, but only core maintainers have the authority to merge code into the official repository and sign releases. This is comparable to editors reviewing manuscripts, deciding whether developers’ code gets adopted and published or sent back for revisions.

The signatures of Bitcoin Core core maintainers guarantee security, assuring all nodes and users that releases are “official and unaltered.” However, Bitcoin Core core maintainers do not have the direct power to trigger on-chain rule changes. For example, even if Bitcoin Core core maintainers have signed and released program files indicating that the Bitcoin network will undergo a soft fork or hard fork, the actual success of the upgrade requires adoption and consensus from users and miners—it cannot be determined solely by the signatures of Bitcoin Core core maintainers.

When Bitcoin first emerged, Satoshi Nakamoto was the sole core maintainer with exclusive authority to modify the core code repository. Satoshi later passed this privilege to Gavin Andresen, who subsequently passed it to Wladimir van der Laan. This meant that for an extended period, the power to maintain and modify Bitcoin network code rested in a single individual’s hands. It wasn’t until 2022, when Wladimir van der Laan stepped down and became embroiled in litigation with Craig Wright (who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto), that this power began to decentralize.

Nevertheless, Bitcoin Core core maintainers remain an important role. People who become core maintainers typically enjoy high trust and reputation within the community or have made outstanding contributions to the Bitcoin network.

For instance, core maintainer Ava Chow, a transgender female developer, rejected a PR from Luke Dashjr in 2024 (another Bitcoin Core developer who attempted to restrict Ordinals transactions at the consensus layer) on grounds of “lack of consensus and creating noise,” thereby preventing a potentially serious consensus split in the Bitcoin network and becoming an unsung hero.

Ava Chow attended the Bitcoin 2024 event

For information about other core maintainers’ background and contributions, please refer to our previous article (Related reading: Who is Protecting Satoshi’s Legacy? Inside the 41-Person Army Behind Bitcoin’s Trillion-Dollar Market Cap). Now let’s explore why TheCharlatan became the 6th core maintainer.

TheCharlatan: A Decade of Cryptocurrency Development Experience

TheCharlatan graduated from the Computer Science department at ETH Zurich and is from South Africa. He specializes in reproducibility and Bitcoin Core’s verification logic. In a 2024 blog post, he claimed to have been developing this project for over two years. TheCharlatan’s work systematically deconstructs, organizes, and modularizes Bitcoin Core’s verification logic, enabling other users to safely reuse it.

TheCharlatan is widely respected among Bitcoin Core’s core developers. During his nomination as core maintainer, at least 20 members expressed agreement. When nominating him, glozow praised: “He is a reliable reviewer with extensive work experience in critical areas of the codebase, thoughtful about what we deliver to users and developers, and deeply understands the technical consensus process.”

Bitcoin Core core developer group chat content (translated)

According to his GitHub account information, TheCharlatan first engaged in cryptocurrency development in 2015, creating a cryptocurrency price ticker tool—a simple Linux desktop widget with built-in price alerts that trigger when set thresholds are reached. After 2017, his cryptocurrency development activity became more frequent. Starting in 2018, he formally began contributing code to Bitcoin Core. This suggests TheCharlatan has had contact with Bitcoin Core for 8 years, making him quite experienced.

It’s also worth noting that between 2021-2022, TheCharlatan contributed to code repositories for a Farcaster project. This project allowed people to exchange Bitcoin and Monero in a peer-to-peer manner with anyone running a Farcaster node.

TheCharlatan indeed has a particular fondness for Monero. In 2020, he researched potential destruction issues with using hardware wallets to transfer Monero, and discussed Monero’s time-lock vulnerabilities.

Of course, truly technical experts can sometimes be enigmatic. TheCharlatan frequently retweets other technical posts on X but rarely expresses his own opinions (he stated in May 2025 that he dislikes NFTs even more). However, starting from June 2025, he repeats a monthly post with the content: “Cash on the internet. No auto-updates.”

I was concerned this might be some coded language among Bitcoin technical experts or some cultural slogan I wasn’t aware of, so I asked AI to explain the meaning of these two sentences. AI said these two statements actually express an extremely purist Bitcoin maximalist viewpoint:

“True internet-native cash should be as simple and immutable as physical cash. Once you start tinkering with auto-updates, governance voting, and frequent rule changes, it’s no longer cash—it becomes another centralized/semi-centralized/manipulable ‘digital bank account.’”