Announcing cBTC Earn Vault: First Trust-Minimized BTC Vault
We are expanding cBTC’s utility with the launch of the cBTC Earn Vault. The cBTC Earn Vault enables Bitcoin holders to earn a competitive yield directly on their BTC without converting into stablecoins or secondary assets.
Powered by BitVM and zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography, cBTC debuted as the first trust-minimized BTC representation on a fully programmable Bitcoin layer. Since mainnet launch, cBTC has processed over $65M in volume, while the Clementine bridge powering cBTC has become the choice for institutions bridging BTC, processing over 190 BTC in volume alone. The cBTC Earn Vault builds on this foundation by giving cBTC holders a direct yield engine on Citrea.
The cBTC Earn Vault offers a competitive yield with ~10% APY including the CTR incentives:
Deposit into the cBTC Earn Vault
cBTC Earn Vault Strategy and Launch Partners
To deliver sustainable and risk-minimized yields, the cBTC Earn Vault brings together a cohort of institutional-grade launch partners:
- Clearstar Labs (Vault Curator): An experienced Swiss risk curation firm built to make onchain yield viable at institutional scale.
- Noon Capital (Main Strategy Partner): An institutional-grade yield platform and long-term Citrea ecosystem partner managing over 80 cBTC in Noon cBTC Vault.
- Upshift (Vault Interface Deployment): Delivering a seamless, user-friendly frontend interface for vault interaction.
Clearstar generates base returns by depositing the cBTC Earn Vault capital into a carry trade: posting cBTC as collateral on the Citrea Morpho ctUSD vault to borrow ctUSD, which is then deployed into yield-bearing assets to capture a spread above borrow costs.
Clearstar keeps the vault’s NAV in cBTC meaning that any yield earned in dollars is converted back to BTC. The vault strategies will grow and change over time with Citrea’s growing ecosystem.
At launch, the vault’s return is driven by two core yield streams:
- Noon Capital Base Yield: Clearstar allocates cBTC Earn Vault deposits to Noon Capital. Noon executes looping strategies with its sUSN stablecoin to generate baseline yield. Learn more about Noon’s strategies.
- CTR Incentives: Additional CTR rewards are distributed to the vault participants via Merkl. While CTR incentives are committed for the first 6 months of the vault, the allocation amount is subject to change based on the vault’s TVL. CTR rewards accrue separately on Merkl and require manual claiming. See Merkl link for the CTR rewards.
The Upshift interface displays a single combined vault APY that breaks down both the underlying strategy yield and the annualized CTR incentives.
This structure allows the cBTC Earn Vault to target a projected yield of ~10% APY, which will scale up or down based on total value locked (TVL).
What's Next? More Distribution and Privacy
The launch of the cBTC Earn Vault is only the beginning of our broader vision for Bitcoin-structured products.
Moving forward, Citrea plans to integrate the cBTC Earn Vault directly into risk-minimized venues, including neobanks, enabling everyday users to access Bitcoin yield directly from fintech applications.
With Citrea’s acquisition of Crest, we also aim to expand privacy features across the ecosystem. While the vault remains public, we plan to allow users to deposit into the vault privately, effectively unlinking a user's deposit address from their onchain vault position.