Key Insights
- Citrea is building the first-ever ZK-rollup on Bitcoin, aiming to improve scalability and enable smart contracts.
- Similar to how Polygon solved Ethereum’s scalability issues, Citrea aims to do the same for BTC.
- Citrea just secured $2.7 million in seed funding from Galaxy Digital to develop this project.
- ZK-rollups offer faster transactions, lower fees, increased security, and EVM compatibility.
- Bitcoin’s TVL has already reacted positively to this news and currently sits at $1.66 billion
BTC is by far, the leading blockchain in terms of security, decentralization and even price—no other chain can contest that.
However, Bitcoin lags behind the others in terms of a very important factor.
That factor is Defi and smart contracts.
Ethereum became popular in the first place because it supported smart contracts and allowed developers to build a wide range of Dapps on top of its infrastructure.
However, as of recently, BTC has been bringing itself up to speed and is now set to undergo a massive transformation.
Citrea, a zero-knowledge rollup project, is set to build the first-ever ZK Rollyp on BTC, bringing something similar to Ethereum’s Polygon to the flagship blockchain.
A New Kind Of Polygon On Bitcoin
Polygon became a massive success when it launched on Ethereum, because the Ethereum network was growing very rapidly, and started to develop scalability issues.
Gas fees soared, and the network became congested quite regularly.
However, with the introduction of this L2 network, developers and users could opt for a more scalable blockchain built on top of Ethereum, and enjoy low fees and faster transactions.
According to a recent announcement, something similar is set to happen between Citrea and BTC.
Citrea just secured $2.7 million in seed funding from Galaxy Ventures and is set to improve Bitcoin’s scalability by a wide margin.
But What Exactly Is A Zero-Knowledge Rollup?
Zero-knowledge rollups, also known as ZK-rollups simply take the workload off L1 blockchains like Ethereum and even BTC.
Instead of having these L1 blockchains handle millions of transactions from users, Rollups use cryptographic techniques to process transactions separately, thereby reducing the burden on the L1.
Think of it like a restaurant, where each customer can either walk to the cashier and order a meal, or a single person can take everyone’s orders and have the receptionist handle it all in one go.
By bringing this new ZK-rollup we mentioned to Bitcoin, Citrea aims to increase the efficiency of the Bitcoin network, without affecting its security and decentralization.
This means that Bitcoin users will now be able to enjoy faster and cheaper transactions, as well as new Dapps and NFT applications.
Here’s How Citrea Is Different
The Bitcoin network has expanded rapidly over the years.
So much so, that Citrea is actually not the first project to attempt scaling Bitcoin using a secondary layer.
We have other L2s like the well-known Lightning Network, Stacks ($STX), Omni Layer and Rootstock, to mention a few.
However, the difference is that Citrea is the first to attempt scaling Bitcoin using ZK-rollups, which offer several advantages over other methods.
Moreover, ZK-Rollups are several times more secure than other methods, ensuring that no funds can be lost or stolen.
If all of the above weren’t enough, ZK-rollups are compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing them to execute smart contracts.
In essence, developers can easily move their applications from Ethereum, Polygon, etc and deploy them straight on top of Bitcoin (or even both platforms).
All of this is without mentioning how ZK-rollups are more scalable and can handle thousands of transactions per second (compared to Bitcoin’s 7 transactions per second limit).
This makes whatever Citrea is building a highly exciting project, suitable for everything from defi and NFTs to gaming and social media.
Bitcoin’s TVL has even reacted to this new development as shown in the snapshot above.
February 2024 in particular, has seen this metric explode to the upside, with a current value of $1.66 billion in total value locked.
Disclaimer: Voice of Crypto aims to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, but it will not be responsible for any missing facts or inaccurate information. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile financial assets, so research and make your own financial decisions.
