Citrea Launches Bitcoin ZK-Rollup Mainnet With Native ctUSD Stablecoin

Citrea, a zero-knowledge rollup designed for Bitcoin, launched its mainnet on Tuesday, introducing decentralized finance capabilities and a new U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The platform, backed by Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures, aims to transform dormant Bitcoin holdings into productive collateral for lending, structured products, and decentralized trading. The team projects active DeFi liquidity will reach $50 million within the first few weeks of operation.

The launch includes ctUSD, a stablecoin issued by regulated crypto payments firm MoonPay and backed one-to-one by cash and short-term U.S. Treasuries. Unlike bridged stablecoins that import tokens from other blockchains, ctUSD is natively issued on Citrea and integrated with MoonPay's banking infrastructure, allowing users to wire fiat currency that automatically converts to ctUSD on-chain.

According to Chainway Labs CEO Orkun Mahir Kılıç, the company behind Citrea, this native approach eliminates risks associated with bridge hacks and third-party wrapping protocols while preventing liquidity fragmentation across multiple asset versions.

The mainnet debut has reignited debates over Bitcoin block space usage. While some developers view such layer-2 solutions as necessary for sustaining miner revenue as block rewards decline, critics argue Bitcoin's limited capacity should prioritize simple, censorship-resistant payments over complex financial systems.