Citrea, the Bitcoin application platform backed by Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures, today officially announced its token CTR, marking the start of a user-led Bitcoin economy. By enabling a coordination asset model, Citrea is establishing a new standard for a Bitcoin ecosystem: one that empowers active stewards to decide exactly where ecosystem capital flows to support their own strategic interests.
Over the past two years, Citrea has delivered a series of firsts for Bitcoin: the first ZK Rollup secured by Bitcoin, and Clementine, the first trust-minimized BTC bridge built on BitVM. This foundation has fostered a diverse Bitcoin economy driven by privacy, fast BTC payments, lending, trading, and BTC yield. Today, with CTR, Citrea is handing control of this economy to the people who use it.
“At Citrea, we’ve worked one-on-one with founders to build a unique ecosystem for Bitcoin capital markets. We’ve brought blue-chip applications and infrastructure to Bitcoin for the first time,” said Orkun Kilic, director of the Citrea Foundation. “Citrea’s ecosystem has matured into a comprehensive Bitcoin economy. We are now at the stage where users must direct where that value flows. That is what CTR enables.”
As protocols evolve and their liquidity grows, the distribution of their ecosystem capital becomes critical. Most ecosystems today rely on centralized decision-making to determine where this capital goes, creating an “Ownership Gap” – a disconnect between who creates long-term value in an ecosystem and who captures it. As a result, committed participants disengage as their stake in the ecosystem is decoupled from its capital flow. Meanwhile, rent-seeking capital is over-rewarded, harvests value, and leaves. Over time, this triggers a destructive loop for the ecosystem growth.
Citrea’s ecosystem and capital have matured to a stage that requires a transition from top-down decisions to user-led economic coordination. CTR embodies the belief that the Bitcoin economy should rely on the strategic interests and active curation of its own users. This is accomplished through a modified vote-escrow staking model. Users stake CTR to receive xCTR, a non-transferable token that grants voting power over the Citrea Governance Treasury and the Citrea Network. These holders curate the flow of value in their own interests; building toward an efficient, user-owned Bitcoin economy that prioritizes privacy, self-custody, and capital markets.
The announcement of CTR serves as the user-led economic activation of the Citrea Network. It marks the point where the network’s governance and growth are handed over to its stewards. The Bitcoin economy should be owned by the people who use it. Learn more about Citrea and CTR.
About Citrea
Citrea is the Bitcoin application layer, enabling institutions and users to access Bitcoin capital markets. The platform aims to expand Bitcoin’s financial utility while remaining anchored to the network’s security model. Citrea is backed by investors including Founders Fund, Galaxy, Maven 11, Delphi Digital, Erik Voorhees, Balaji Srinivasan and more.
For more information, please visit: Citrea website | Citrea X Account
About Chainway Labs
Chainway Labs, a core contributor to Citrea, was co-founded by four young computer scientists and entrepreneurs with a focus on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and zero-knowledge technologies. The broader Chainway Labs team includes engineers and mathematicians whose backgrounds include multiple medals from the International Mathematics Olympiad and the International Olympiad in Informatics.