Citrea, a project that aims to scale Bitcoin through ZK rollups, came out of stealth on Tuesday. The project aims to become a pathway for several initiatives to take advantage of the decentralization and security of Bitcoin while at the same time contributing to scaling and giving developers the ability to adapt Ethereum Virtual Machine ( EVM) apps into the protocol.
Citrea Proposes First ZK Rollup to Make Bitcoin the All-Chain
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Citrea Comes out of Stealth, Proposes to Scale Bitcoin Using ZK Rollups
Citrea, a project incubated by Chainway Labs, came out of stealth to propose the first Bitcoin native scaling solution involving ZK rollups. The innovation, which takes advantage of the possibilities introduced by BitVM to natively verify zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs without making any changes to the protocol, takes a different approach to blockchain scaling.
For Citrea, any project that seeks to scale Bitcoin without using its blockspace is not helping it scale and will eventually become a competition for Bitcoin itself. Also, these solutions fail to address the functionalities needed to make Bitcoin the foundation for world finance: the Lightning Network fails to add programmability to Bitcoin. Similarly, sidechains fail to use Bitcoin blockspace, diverting their action to other chains.
Citrea proposes a solution that addresses these two aspects, leveraging ZK proofs that use the Bitcoin blockspace to settle its transactions while sharding the execution task to its virtual machine. Citrea claims it is the “only execution layer on Bitcoin that settles on Bitcoin, the first ZK proof verification, and the first universal L2 verification inside Bitcoin.”
Citrea also allows the implementation of Ethereum Virtual Machine ( EVM) apps on top of Bitcoin, allowing it to become the bedrock for different apps that have been pushed to other chains that lack the trust and security that Bitcoin offers. Nonetheless, it is not limited to EVM apps and can adopt new virtual machines due to its modular architecture.
The project is already being tested in a private testnet. Citrea reported that it is working hard to launch a public testnet for its product, with more information available in the coming months.
What do you think about Citrea and its ZK-proof-based scaling solution? Tell us in the comments section below.
