Bitcoin Rollup Citrea Aims to Make BTC a Programmable Asset With ZK Proofs, Raises $14M Series A

• Bitcoin rollup Citrea raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

• The project aims to transform the Bitcoin blockchain into a venue for smart contracts by using zero-knowledge (ZK) technology to make bitcoin a programmable asset.

• Adding greater utility to Bitcoin is of “critical” importance, Citrea said.

Citrea, a Bitcoin project striving to expand the utility of the original cryptocurrency by using zero-knowledge technology, said it raised $14 million in Series A funding.

“Citrea is an EVM-compatible layer, meaning all the applications on Ethereum can simply deploy on Citrea without having to change anything,” Orkun Mahir Kılıç, CEO of Citrea builder Chainway Labs, told CoinDesk in an interview last month.

Bitcoin risks becoming “obsolete”

The project aims to transform the Bitcoin blockchain into a venue for smart contracts by making bitcoin (BTC) a programmable asset through the use of zero-knowledge (ZK) technology.

ZK technology allows data to be transferred securely between parties through the ability to demonstrate knowledge without actually revealing the data and without the prover and verifier interacting.

“Citrea enhances the capabilities of Bitcoin blockspace with ZK technology and enables the Bitcoin network to support diverse on-chain applications and platforms,” Citrea said.

The goal of allowing greater utility is one of “critical” importance, according to Citrea. While BTC has served well as a form of digital gold, it risks being sidelined by users relying on intermediaries and external networks to provide scalability, Citrea said.