Bitcoin Core Strengthens Development With New Trusted Keys Role

One notable change came in Bitcoin Core development this month: a new contributor was given direct commit access to the main software branch.

As per reports, the Bitcoin Core team added a pseudonymous developer by the name of TheCharlatan-elsewhere, referred to as sedited, to the Trusted Keys group. This is its first new member in this position in over two-and-a-half years.

Today, Bitcoin Core has six Trusted Keys PGP maintainers who can approve and commit changes to the master branch. These are Marco Falke, Gloria Zhao, Ryan Ofsky, Hennadii Stepanov, Ava Chow, and TheCharlatan. Their keys alone are trusted by the 25-person Core GitHub community for final software commits.

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A Rare Promotion Inside Bitcoin Core

This decision came about after internal discussions among Core contributors, with at least 20 members in favor of the promotion. There were no objections during review, which leads to great confidence in the work and judgment of TheCharlatan. Only recently, in 2023, was Ryan Ofsky added to this group, making such promotions very rare.

Historically, Trusted Keys membership has been very restricted. The following developers joined in: Marco Falke in 2016, Samuel Dobson in 2018 but had left by 2022, and Stepanov and Chow in 2021. Zhao joined in 2022, and Ofsky in 2023. In each case, years of steady work-not just some brief spell of activity- are demonstrated.

Bitcoin developers sign software updates with PGP keys so that users can verify they come from approved maintainers. Because there is no central authority in Bitcoin, this becomes one of the strongest protections for the network’s software integrity.

Who TheCharlatan Is and Why It Matters

The Charlatan studied computer science at the University of Zurich and is originally from South Africa. Most of his work involves reproducible builds and validation logic in Bitcoin Core. Reproducible builds allow independent people to verify that the compiled software corresponds to the published source code, reducing the possibility of stealth changes.

He has also worked on making Bitcoin’s validation logic simpler, building on earlier work by Carl Dong. This work separates the rules for block validation from other logic that doesn’t validate, making the code easier to audit and safer to maintain.

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