Robin Linus, the author of the BitVM whitepaper, criticized Citrea, stating that the project’s marketing is “full of exaggerated claims and misleading statements.”
Bitcoin zero-knowledge rollup Citrea, which recently raised $2.7 million in a seed funding round led by Galaxy Ventures, has come under fire for allegedly misleading the public with its marketing campaign.
Robin Linus, the creator of the BitVM whitepaper, describes a process to enable Ethereum-like smart-contract functionality for Bitcoin, and expressed his concerns in an X-post on May 30, saying that Citrea’s promotional material is “full of overclaims and misleading statements”.
Although the details remain slim, Linus said that Citrea’s marketing efforts falsely imply a closer tie to the BitVM project to attract investors and attention.
https://twitter.com/0x_orkun/status/1796062654286450861
Orkun Kılıç, co-founder of Chainway Labs, the team behind Citrea, responded to the allegations, saying Linus’ statements “overshadowed” his work. Kılıç emphasized that Citrea’s marketing accurately reflects developments and specifications, highlighting their team’s expertise in zero-knowledge technology and previous innovations.
“We have a background in ZK and have invented several products, such as PoI and PP. We don’t need connections and never have.”
Orkun Kılıç
Citrea aims to build an execution layer on top of the Bitcoin blockchain using zero-knowledge proofs to scale the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Zero-knowledge proofs are cryptographic methods that allow one party to prove to another that they know a value or have certain information without revealing the information themselves. They have been deployed in cryptocurrency to improve privacy and scalability, with notable implementations including zk-SNARKs in Zcash for private transactions and zk-rollups in Ethereum for efficient and scalable transaction processing.
According to the project technical documentationCitrea proofs “are enrolled in Bitcoin and optimistically verified via BitVM.”
In February, Citrea raised nearly $3 million in funding from multiple investors, including Galaxy Digital’s Galaxy Ventures, Delphi Ventures, Eric Wall and Anurag Arjun.
At the time of the funding announcement, crypto venture capital firm Pantera Capital predicted a substantial opportunity for the Bitcoin network in the decentralized finance (defi) space. Pantera suggested that Bitcoin could potentially attract half a trillion dollars in value by enabling decentralized applications (dApps), making Bitcoin-based defi a major competitor in the crypto market.
Currently, Ethereum dominates the defi landscape and hosts most of the related activities. According to Pantera Capital, decentralized applications on Ethereum have historically accounted for 8% to 50% of Ethereum’s market capitalization, while the current figure is around 25%. Applying these ratios to Bitcoin, Pantera analysts predict that the network could generate approximately $225 billion in value through Bitcoin-based dApps.
