Bitcoin Core Adds TheCharlatan as Sixth Trusted Keys Maintainer with Commit Access

Bitcoin Core added pseudonymous developer TheCharlatan (also known as "sedited") as its sixth Trusted Keys maintainer with commit access to the software's main branch on Jan. 8, 2026, Protos reports. He joins existing key holders Marco Falke, Gloria Zhao, Ryan Ofsky, Hennadii Stepanov and Ava Chow, whose six PGP keys are the only ones recognized with commit rights among 25 members of the project's GitHub development community. At least 20 contributors in a group discussion supported the promotion, with no objections raised to a nomination citing his reliable code reviews, deep contributions to critical parts of the codebase, careful handling of releases, and strong understanding of technical consensus processes. The South African developer, a computer science graduate of the University of Zurich, focuses on software reproducibility and Bitcoin Core's validation logic, extending prior work by Carl Dong on decoupling validation from non-validation logic.