On Tuesday, Citrea—a technology that uses ZK rollups to grow Bitcoin—came out of stealth. The project intends to become a means by which other efforts can benefit from the security and decentralization of Bitcoin, while also facilitating scaling and enabling developers to integrate Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) programs into the protocol.
Citrea Emerges from Silence and Offers ZK Rollups to Scale Bitcoin
Out of stealth, Citrea, a project supported by Chainway Labs, presented the first native scaling solution for Bitcoin that uses ZK rollups. The invention adopts a novel strategy for blockchain scaling by utilizing BitVM’s capabilities to natively validate zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs without modifying the protocol.
According to Citrea, any initiative that aims to expand Bitcoin outside of its blockspace will not aid in its growth and will ultimately pose a threat to the cryptocurrency itself. Furthermore, the Lightning Network’s inability to give Bitcoin programmability is another way that these solutions fall short of meeting the requirements to establish Bitcoin as the cornerstone of global finance. In a similar vein, sidechains utilize other chains for their operations instead of utilizing the Bitcoin blockspace.
Citrea offers a solution that takes care of these two issues by utilizing ZK proofs, which partition the execution task to its virtual machine and settle transactions using the Bitcoin blockspace. According to Citrea, it is the “first ZK proof verification, the first universal L2 verification inside Bitcoin, and the only execution layer on Bitcoin that settles on Bitcoin.”
In addition, Citrea permits the addition of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) apps to the Bitcoin network, making Bitcoin the foundation for a variety of programs that have been moved to other chains that do not provide the same level of security and trust as Bitcoin. However, because of its modular architecture, it is not restricted to EVM apps and can support additional virtual machines.
A private testnet is already being used to evaluate the project. Citrea stated that it is hard at work launching a public testnet for its product, and that additional details will be revealed in the upcoming months.
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