New Developer Joins Bitcoin Software Team – First Time in Years

The Bitcoin Core developer community has implemented a significant governance update effective January 2026.

For the first time since May 2023, the number of Trusted Keys with Commit privileges to the Bitcoin Core master branch has been increased. Anonymous developer TheCharlatan joined this privileged group this month with 8 keys.

With this appointment, TheCharlatan becomes the sixth Trusted Key holder, joining Marco Falke, Gloria Zhao, Ryan Ofsky, Hennadii Stepanov, and Ava Chow. The names who joined this elite group in the last decade are: Falke (2016), Samuel Dobson (2018, left in 2022), Stepanov (2021), Chow (2021), Zhao (2022), and Ofsky (2023).

Bitcoin Core developers sign software updates with PGP keys. The 25 members of the Bitcoin Core development community on GitHub recognize only these six PGP keys for Commit access. In a group chat among Core contributors, it was noted that at least 20 members supported TheCharlatan’s promotion to Trusted Keys, with no objections to the nomination text. The nomination description stated that TheCharlatan is a “reliable reviewer with extensive work in critical code areas, a meticulous approach to releases to users and developers, and a good understanding of technical consensus processes.”

TheCharlatan, a South African developer with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Zurich, focuses his work on reproducible builds and Bitcoin Core’s validation logic. Reproducible builds allow for independent validation of the path from source code to binary file. On the validation side, TheCharlatan’s contributions expand on Carl Dong’s work on the Bitcoin Core library, focusing on making the validating/non-validating logic, which determines whether a block extends the current “maximum power” chain, cleaner and more sustainable.

At Bitcoin’s inception in 2009, the authority to commit keys belonged solely to Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto later transferred this authority to Gavin Andresen, who in turn passed it on to Wladimir van der Laan. In the shadow of Craig Wright’s years-long legal battles over the Bitcoin White Paper copyright, van der Laan led an initiative to decentralize commit keys. This initiative was successful and has made the multi-lead maintainer model a permanent fixture in Bitcoin Core development today.

*This is not investment advice.