According to Cointelegraph: Chainway Labs' project Citrea, focused on bringing zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups) to Bitcoin, has raised $2.7 million in a seed funding round, led by Galaxy Ventures, the venture department of Galaxy Digital. This funding will enable Chainway Labs to bring Citrea, their innovative ZK-rollup project, to market.
ZK-rollups are popular in the Ethereum ecosystem through layer-2 blockchains like Polygon and zkSync, providing effective, lower-cost transactions by grouping them on layer-2s. They use a cryptographic protocol called ZK-proofs to prove transactions to the base blockchain without specifying transaction details.
Citrea, termed as the first rollup that improves Bitcoin blockspace with zero-knowledge technology, claims that their ZK-rollup tackles Bitcoin's transaction handling challenges, catering to various applications without altering the consensus rules. It aims to leverage Bitcoin not just as a digital currency, but also as a foundational layer for securing and settling transactions.
Furthermore, Citrea suggests that their solution could pave the way for an ecosystem of blockchain games, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized finance on Bitcoin, without compromising its security or modifying its consensus rules. Citrea's solution is based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine, enabling developers working with the EVM to build on Bitcoin.
