Citrea aims to transform the Bitcoin blockchain into a platform for smart contracts using ZK technology, thereby turning BTC into a programmable asset.
Citrea, the Bitcoin Rollup project, raises $14 million
Citrea, a Bitcoin project aiming to expand the utility of the largest cryptocurrency through Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology, has successfully raised $14 million in a Series A funding round.
This round was led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, with participation from Maven 11, Mirana Ventures, dao5, ZKV, and a host of angel investors including Erik Voorhees (Co-founder and CEO of ShapeShift), Joe and Nikil (Co-founders of Alchemy), and Mustafa AI-Bassam (Co-founder of Celestia).
Previously, in February, Citrea had raised $2.7 million in a Seed round led by Galaxy, using the BitVM computation model designed to enable the deployment of smart contracts similar to Ethereum on the Bitcoin network.
The round saw participation from 80+ angels via an @echodotxyz group, Tea Club.
— Citrea (@citrea_xyz) October 31, 2024
Other prominent investors in the round included @daofive, @zkv_xyz, @axiombtc, @nikil, @thejoelau, @ericyakes, @nathanmccauley, @musalbas, @lopp, @jillrgunter, @sunnya97, @nickwh8te, ...
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Orkun Mahir Kılıç, the CEO of the project development unit Chainway Labs, stated that Citrea is an EVM-compatible layer, meaning that all applications on Ethereum can be deployed on Citrea without any changes.
Citrea aims to transform the Bitcoin blockchain into a platform for deploying smart contracts, turning Bitcoin (BTC) into a programmable asset through the use of zero-knowledge (ZK) technology.
According to the Citrea team, expanding the utility of Bitcoin is "extremely important". While BTC has been functioning well as "digital gold", there is a risk of it being "pushed aside" due to its reliance on intermediaries and external networks to provide scalability. As a result, Bitcoin is being weakened by the lack of suitable scaling solutions, which hinders its role in DeFi and risks making it obsolete.
The use of intermediaries to expand the utility of BTC is being explored by Bitcoin layer-2 BOB projects, with the aim of creating a bridge to other networks like Ethereum to perform final transactions verified on Bitcoin.
Compiled by Coin68
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