For the First Time in Three Years, Bitcoin Welcomes Its Sixth Core Maintainer

Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author｜Golem (@web3_golem)

On January 8, the Bitcoin Core team promoted developer TheCharlatan (X: @sedited) to a core maintainer, making him the sixth member to hold a trusted key. The other five core maintainers holding 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 individuals have been granted this privilege, highlighting its importance and the strictness of the selection process.

Bitcoin Core 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 supporting tools and documentation. Bitcoin Core is non-profit and operates primarily on funding 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 are granted the status of "Core Maintainer" – they are currently 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 core maintainers are like the "editors" for Bitcoin network developers; anyone can contribute code and submit PRs to the repository, but only core maintainers have the authority to merge code into the official repository and sign releases. This is similar to an editor reviewing a manuscript, deciding whether a developer's code is accepted for publication or sent back for revision.

The signatures of Bitcoin Core core maintainers guarantee security, assuring all nodes and users that the release is "official and unaltered." However, Bitcoin Core core maintainers do not have the direct power to trigger changes to on-chain rules. For example, even if Bitcoin Core core maintainers have signed and released program files for a soft fork or hard fork, the actual success of the upgrade depends on adoption and consensus from users and miners, not solely on the signatures of the core 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's code was held by a single person. 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 be decentralized.

Even so, the role of a Bitcoin Core core maintainer remains crucial. Those who become core maintainers typically enjoy high levels of trust and reputation within the community or have made outstanding contributions to the Bitcoin network.

For instance, one core maintainer, Ava Chow, is a transgender female developer. In 2024, when another Bitcoin core developer, Luke Dashjr, wanted to restrict Ordinals transactions at the consensus level, it was she who rejected Luke Dashjr's PR on the grounds of "lack of consensus and creating noise," preventing a potential severe split in Bitcoin network consensus and becoming an unsung hero.

Ava Chow once attended the Bitcoin 2024 event

For introductions and contributions of other core maintainers, please 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 was able to become the 6th core maintainer.

TheCharlatan: A Decade of Crypto Development Experience

TheCharlatan, a South African, graduated from the University of Zurich with a degree in Computer Science. He focuses on reproducibility and the verification logic of Bitcoin Core. In a 2024 blog post, he claimed to have been developing this project for over two years. This work by TheCharlatan systematically splits, organizes, and modularizes Bitcoin Core's verification logic, allowing other users to safely reuse it.

TheCharlatan

TheCharlatan is well-regarded among Bitcoin Core core developers. During the process of promoting him to core maintainer, at least 20 members expressed their agreement. When nominating him, glozow praised: "He is a reliable reviewer with extensive experience working in critical areas of the codebase, thoughtful about what we deliver to users and developers, and has a solid understanding of the technical consensus process."

Bitcoin Core Core Developer Group Chat Content (Translated)

According to his Github account information, TheCharlatan first engaged in crypto development in 2015, creating a cryptocurrency price display tool. This tool was a simple Linux desktop widget with built-in price alerts that triggered when set thresholds were reached. His crypto development activities became more frequent after 2017. He officially began contributing code to Bitcoin Core in 2018, so it can be inferred that TheCharlatan first encountered Bitcoin Core about 8 years ago, making him a veteran.

It is also worth noting that in 2021-2022, TheCharlatan also contributed to the codebase of a Farcaster project. 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 burn issues that could arise from transferring Monero using hardware wallets and explored timelock vulnerabilities in Monero.

Of course, true tech geeks can sometimes be hard to pin down. On the X platform, TheCharlatan frequently retweets other technical posts but rarely expresses his own views (in May 2025, he posted that he disliked NFTs even more). However, starting in 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 purists or a cultural slogan I wasn't aware of, so I asked AI to explain the meaning of these two sentences. AI said these sentences actually express a very extreme Bitcoin maximalist viewpoint:

"True internet-native cash should be as simple, direct, and immutable as physical cash. Once you start introducing automatic updates, governance votes, or frequent rule changes, it's no longer cash; it becomes another centralized/semi-centralized/manipulable 'digital bank account'."