Citrea, Scaling Bitcoin and Creating New Uses, Received $14 Million Investment

Citrea, the Bitcoin rollup project that announced its Series A investment round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund last week, stated in an interview with CoinDesk that adding more functionality to Bitcoin is “critical”.

The project stands out as the first scalability solution that expands the usage area of ​​Bitcoin without compromising its decentralization and security, and builds an EVM-compatible layer on top of Bitcoin using zero knowledge technology. In this focus, Citrea focuses on scaling Bitcoin and expanding its usage areas with zero information technology.

Bitcoin’s financial potential is not fully exploited due to the lack of a scalability solution that preserves its fundamental principles, and the team is primarily focused on this problem. This shortcoming had led users to hold Bitcoin as a passive investment or rely on intermediaries and external networks to gain access to broader financial activities. Citrea is building the scalability solution that Bitcoin needs with zero-knowledge technology, taking Bitcoin beyond the classifications of ‘digital gold’ or ‘passive investment’ and turning it into an active, programmable asset that supports a variety of decentralized financial applications.

Murat Karademir, the co-founder of the project, explained Citrea’s agenda from the beginning to today and the coming period to CoinDesk Turkey.

1-Citrea’s goal of transforming the Bitcoin blockchain into a platform that will host smart contracts is quite ambitious. How do you plan to achieve this using ZK technology? What are the biggest technical challenges you encountered during this process?

Building a ZK rollup on top of Bitcoin requires a special and thoughtful approach to zero-knowledge proofs and writing data to Bitcoin.

Due to Bitcoin’s limited block capacity, the proofs produced and the data written need to be highly optimized. Apart from this, building a secure bridge between Bitcoin and ZK Rollup requires a very strong team in cryptography.

Our Chainway Labs team has a very competent staff in the field of cryptography and mathematics, and we are taking firm steps towards the mainnet by carrying out the steps in our roadmap as planned.

2-How do you think the solutions you offer for Bitcoin to become a “programmable asset” will provide concrete benefits for users? What are your expectations that it will create new opportunities in the DeFi field?

The biggest value proposition that Citrea brings is to free users and organizations who want to use their Bitcoin in decentralized finance from intermediaries and external networks.

Citrea preserves the values ​​that make Bitcoin what it is, scaling it and making it an active financial platform. Because BTC on Citrea is fully programmable, institutions and individuals can create their own spending rules and vault structures, buy, lend, borrow, or use BTC as they wish, without relying on any central authority. We will see the power of Bitcoin in centralized finance with Citrea.

3-Türkiye is a remarkable country in the crypto ecosystem in terms of developer ecosystem and adaptation. As Citre, what are your thoughts on the Turkish developer ecosystem? As a team, how would you evaluate the journey from ChainLabs to the idea of ​​Citrea?

Türkiye has a great potential with its young population and interest in crypto, and we hear this from our global friends and partners and we can confirm this with Chain analysis reports. In our team, we have teammates who have studied/are studying in the computer engineering and mathematics departments of Boğaziçi, ITU, METU and Sabancı universities. We also started a collaboration with Bilkent, Boğaziçi, Koç and METU computer engineering and cryptography departments for joint senior graduation projects.

There are many career opportunities in our fields, especially for students studying in computer and mathematics departments, but this is not a well-known and preferred career path in our country yet. That’s why, as Citrea, we want to raise the flag high in the field of blockchain and ZKP and prove that our field can also be a good career path. With Citrea Origins, which we recently announced, we want to support early stage teams and turn them into globally successful teams.

Additionally, blockchain clubs accomplish critical work in terms of community. We have plans to support them in the long term. Because for a successful ecosystem, we need to provide not only technical skills but also talents with knowledge and depth in marketing, community, communication and crypto finance. Everyone has a responsibility to reach the level where we will be a country that not only buys and sells but also produces and develops builders and directs technology in the global arena.

Citrea Origins Program

The hot topic is the ‘Citrea Origins’ program launched by Citrea to accelerate the transformation of Bitcoin into a programmable asset.

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With this program, many developers will be able to implement many of their projects such as Bitcoin-supported stable coins, decentralized lending/borrowing platforms, and exchanges with BTC. The first selected group of developers will meet in Bangkok, Thailand, from November 3-10, to collaborate directly with the Citrea team and shape the future of the Bitcoin-powered economy.