Citrea Mainnet Goes Live, Introducing BTC‑Backed DeFi Services and the ctUSD Stablecoin
Tuesday marked the official mainnet launch of Citrea, a Bitcoin‑anchored zero‑knowledge rollup backed by Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures. The platform now offers Bitcoin‑collateralised lending, structured products and a new USD‑pegged stablecoin, ctUSD, aimed at expanding DeFi activity on Bitcoin’s base layer.
The launch
Citrea’s production rollup entered service on Tuesday, bringing a suite of decentralized finance (DeFi) primitives to Bitcoin users. From day one, the network supports:
- BTC‑secured lending – users can lock Bitcoin as collateral and borrow against it.
- Structured products – tokenised strategies that combine Bitcoin exposure with yield‑generating mechanisms.
- Decentralised trading – an on‑‑book that settles trades using rollup proofs stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The team projects that active DeFi liquidity will reach roughly $50 million within the first few weeks, driven primarily by the newly available BTC‑backed products.
ctUSD – a “native” Bitcoin stablecoin
The rollup’s stablecoin, ctUSD, is issued in partnership with MoonPay, a regulated crypto‑payments provider. Unlike wrapped versions of USDT or USDC that rely on external bridges, ctUSD is minted directly on Citrea. The token is fully collateralised 1:1 with cash and short‑term U.S. Treasury securities, and MoonPay’s Iron banking infrastructure supplies fiat‑on‑ramps via virtual International Bank Account Numbers (vIBANs).
Because ctUSD is native to the rollup, it inherits Citrea’s security model rather than the security of a third‑party bridging protocol. According to Citrea co‑founder Orkun Mahir Kılıç, this design eliminates the “bridge‑hack” risk that has plagued many cross‑chain assets and reduces liquidity fragmentation that can increase slippage for traders and lenders.
Technical footprint on Bitcoin
Citrea operates as a ZK‑rollup: transaction data and state updates are compressed into succinct zero‑knowledge proofs, which are then posted to Bitcoin’s blockchain. Early testnet activity already consumed close to 10 % of Bitcoin’s monthly data‑availability bandwidth at peak, indicating that the rollup can command a noticeable share of block space even before mainnet activation.
The rollup’s architecture includes a single sequencer, an off‑chain treasury, and a 10‑party federation that signs blocks, a design choice that has sparked debate about the balance of trust assumptions versus Bitcoin’s native security guarantees.
Community reaction – demand versus purity
The mainnet debut reignited the long‑standing discussion over the optimal use of Bitcoin’s scarce block space. Proponents argue that non‑payment use cases such as Citrea are essential for sustaining miner fee revenue as block rewards continue to halve. Jameson Lopp, a Bitcoin Core developer and Casa security generating sustainable demand for block space.”
Conversely, Bitcoin purists maintain
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/citrea-bitcoin-rollup-is-stress-testing-block-space?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound
