Crypto Quill

Bitcoin is the most secure and decentralized cryptocurrency in the world, but it also faces the challenge of how to handle more transactions and support more diverse applications without compromising its founding principles. While many scalability proposals have been suggested in the past, they often involve moving security and demand off-chain or creating separate consensus protocols or sidechains. However, there is a new solution that aims to scale Bitcoin comprehensively and verifiably on-chain, using zero-knowledge technology. This solution is called Citrea, and it is the first ZK Rollup designed for Bitcoin.

What is Citrea and How Does It Work?

Citrea is the first rollup that enhances the capabilities of Bitcoin blockspace with zero-knowledge technology, enabling developers to build everything on Bitcoin. A rollup is a layer 2 solution that batches multiple transactions into a single transaction on the base layer, reducing congestion and fees. A ZK Rollup is a special type of rollup that uses zero-knowledge proofs to prove the validity and correctness of the transactions, without revealing any sensitive information.

Citrea is the first-ever and only execution layer that settles on Bitcoin. Every transaction occurring on Citrea is fully secured by zero-knowledge proofs and verified by Bitcoin through BitVM, a novel bridging mechanism that allows the Bitcoin blockchain to interact with the rollup. BitVM enables the rollup operator to be penalized and have bonded funds confiscated by any of the verifiers if they attempt to process an inaccurate withdrawal. This ensures that Citrea is trustless, secure, and aligned with Bitcoin’s incentives.

What are the Benefits of Citrea for Bitcoin?

Citrea represents a major milestone for Bitcoin, marking a first as the most secure way to scale Bitcoin, entirely aligning with its incentives. Citrea brings several benefits for Bitcoin, such as:

• Creating consistent fee revenue for miners through data availability, as every transaction on Citrea requires a small amount of data to be inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain for verification purposes.
• Trustlessly scaling BTC beyond Bitcoin with validity proofs, as every BTC on Citrea is backed by BTC on Bitcoin, and users can withdraw their BTC from Citrea to Bitcoin at any time, without relying on any intermediary or custodian.
• Allowing developers to build anything on its EVM equivalent execution shard, as Citrea supports smart contracts and decentralized applications that can leverage the security and liquidity of Bitcoin, without sacrificing scalability or flexibility.

How to Get Started with Citrea?

Citrea has announced that it is now live as Bitcoin’s first ZK Rollup, and its developer contact form opens today for those who want to build on Citrea. Its developer docs are also unveiled to the public, providing detailed information on how to use Citrea and its features. Citrea aims to make Bitcoin the bedrock for a vast array of on-chain applications and financial activities, where developers can build anything. Citrea’s vision is to advance Bitcoin into the next phase, positioning it as the foundation for the world’s financial infrastructure.