Citrea ZK-rollup launch puts pressure on scarce Bitcoin block space

Citrea’s Bitcoin rollup has become a live experiment in whether BTC can support a full DeFi and stablecoin stack, and how much complexity Bitcoin should anchor at the base layer.

Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures-backed Bitcoin zero-knowledge rollup (ZK-rollup) Citrea launched its mainnet on Tuesday with BTC collateral lending, BTC-structured products and a new US dollar stablecoin, ctUSD. 

The launch is aimed at turning what Citrea calls “economically idle” Bitcoin (BTC) into base collateral for decentralized finance (DeFi) and payments, while anchoring more of that activity to Bitcoin’s base layer.

The team expects active DeFi liquidity to reach $50 million in the first few weeks, with BTC lending, BTC-structured products, and decentralized trading already live from day one.

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