Announcing Citrea Public Devnet for Developers and Users

Announcing Citrea Public Devnet for Developers and Users

After more than a year of building in public, we are excited to announce the launch of Citrea Public Devnet for developers and users. 

Citrea Public Devnet marks the first time that Bitcoin is being tested as a data availability layer. With this launch, Bitcoin will serve as a foundational layer for complex applications, allowing developers leverage full Bitcoin security. Citrea Public Devnet is also available for users to engage with applications deployed on the network. 

Citrea is the first rollup that enhances the capabilities of Bitcoin blockspace with zero knowledge technology. Citrea is the only scalability solution that uses Bitcoin both as a data availability and a settlement layer, via its BitVM-based trust-minimized two-way peg program - Clementine. Citrea is fully EVM compatible, enabling all the EVM developers to easily build on Bitcoin. 

Today’s Public Devnet launch is an important milestone as it helps us test and stabilize the network before Citrea Testnet goes live, and then followed by Citrea Mainnet next. Both devs and users alike can use Public Devnet.

What is in Citrea Public Devnet?

Citrea has been in internal devnet mode for the past a few months to run critical tests. Citrea Public Devnet marks the first community-driven tests on the network. Public Devnet runs in our custom Bitcoin signet due to the faucet shortage in Bitcoin Signet and unrealistically deep reorgs in Bitcoin testnet. In this stage, we are inscribing state differences along with the zero-knowledge proofs of the batches to Bitcoin and testing the sequencer, the prover, and the full node software. 

Citrea Public Devnet marks the first test of Bitcoin’s scalability limit as a data availability layer. Activities and deployments on the Devnet will help us reach enough maturity and stability for Citrea testnet.

What is NOT available in Citrea Public Devnet?

Please note that Clementine, Citrea’s BitVM-based trust-minimized two-way peg program, is still a work in progress. Therefore, Citrea Public Devnet does not yet implement Clementine or BitVM. Public Devnet implements a mock BitVM setup with off-chain verification for N/N multisig without fraud proofs. 

Citrea Public Devnet will implement proof sampling instead of proving every sequencer commitment. With proof sampling, we will be able to test proving in production while we work on improving the speed and cost efficiency of our proving system for every Citrea block. 

Following Public Devnet, Citrea will move to testnet phase 1 with feature complete rollup. A gradual rollout of the Citrea testnet enables us to effectively identify and address bugs and user experience issues.  

Public Devnet for Developers: Secure On-chain Finance with Bitcoin  

This is developers’ opportunity to deploy complex applications that inherit full Bitcoin security. Bitcoin can now serve as the foundation for diverse on-chain applications, from DeFi to private transfers. 

Here are some directions for developers to make the most out of Bitcoin with Citrea:

  • Easily deploy smart contracts: Citrea’s execution layer is fully EVM compatible. EVM compatibility allows developers to use familiar tooling and languages such as Foundry, Hardhat, Solidity and Vyper.
  • Run your node to verify Citrea: Don’t Trust, Verify! We prepared a guideline to make running a node as easy as possible. Run a Citrea node next to your Bitcoin node and verify Citrea transactions.

We take pride in collaborative open-source development and are ready to support teams building on Citrea. Decentralized networks succeed with decentralized contributions!

Public Devnet for Users

We rely on our community to test the stability of the network. Transacting on our Public Devnet is a much-needed way to participate in Citrea’s development. 

Here are some directions on how our community can be part of the Devnet:

  • Bridge to Citrea Public Devnet: Bridging BTC from our custom Bitcoin signet to Citrea Public Devnet is a simple send operation to a unique taproot address generated by users’ EVM addresses. Claiming your funds from Citrea Public Devnet is trustless. This means that you can unilaterally get your funds back after 200 Bitcoin blocks when encountered a problem with your deposit. Although funds have no value in Devnet and Testnet stages, we have prioritized enabling our users to experience the trustless claiming feature.
  • Send transactions on Citrea Public Devnet: Activities on our Devnet will help us monitor the network performance and fix any instabilities. Engage with dApps (Decentralized Applications) deployed on the Devnet to help us advance to Citrea Testnet Phase. 

Blockchains are as strong as their community. We look forward to hearing your feedback! 

Making Bitcoin the Foundation for World’s Finance

Citrea’s vision is to build scalable infrastructure that advances Bitcoin into its next phase, the foundation for the world’s finance. Our core belief is that Bitcoin and its values should be scaled to serve as the standard for decentralized finance. Achieving this vision requires scaling Bitcoin blockspace to increase its transaction capacity and offer more expressivity and features without changing its consensus rules.

Citrea Public Devnet is the first step in establishing Bitcoin as the base layer for a dynamic financial ecosystem. Scaling Bitcoin blockspace is the only way to transact with Bitcoin security. 

Bitcoin security – Modular scalability!

Get Ready

Join our community to be part of the Citrea culture and contribute to Bitcoin scalability.