Citrea

The firm's core product, Citrea, is the first ZK-rollup for Bitcoin, designed to expand the network's capabilities without altering its fundamental consensus rules. It addresses Bitcoin's limitations in transaction volume and application diversity by processing transactions off-chain and bundling them into batches. A succinct zero-knowledge proof, specifically a STARK proof wrapped into a SNARK proof, is then generated to validate the entire batch. This proof is inscribed onto the Bitcoin blockchain, ensuring that Citrea leverages Bitcoin's security and data availability. This architecture aims to transform Bitcoin from a passive store of value into a dynamic foundation for decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, and other complex applications.

Citrea operates as a Type 2 zkEVM, making it equivalent to the Ethereum Virtual Machine. This compatibility allows developers to build and deploy smart contracts on Bitcoin using familiar Ethereum tools, with BTC serving as the native gas token (referred to as cBTC within the Citrea environment). The platform is designed to be trust-minimized, relying on Bitcoin for settlement and security. A key feature is Clementine, a BitVM-based two-way peg mechanism that facilitates the trust-minimized transfer of BTC between the main blockchain and the layer-2 network. To date, Chainway Labs has secured $16.7 million in funding across two rounds: a $2.7 million seed round in February 2024, led by Galaxy Digital, and a $14 million Series A in October 2024, led by Founders Fund.