Bitcoin Rollup Citrea Launches Clementine Bridge to Ease BTC Collateral Challenges in DeFi
Citrea deploys its upgraded bridge using BitVM2 on Bitcoin testnet
Key Points
Citrea is working to extend Bitcoin’s functionality by addressing the collateral barriers in connecting Bitcoin to programmable layer 2 solutions.
The project’s Clementine Bridge offers a trust-minimized solution to make BTC usable in DeFi applications.
The bridge is built using BitVM2, a programming upgrade that enhances Bitcoin’s programmability.
Citrea, a Bitcoin rollup project focused on expanding the network’s utility, has taken a major step toward integrating Bitcoin into decentralized finance (DeFi) by deploying its Clementine Bridge on the Bitcoin testnet.
The new bridge, powered by the BitVM2 programming language, aims to address one of the major hurdles in bringing BTC to programmable environments—securely bridging Bitcoin to layer 2 and sidechain ecosystems without excessive collateral requirements.
“A secure bridge between Bitcoin and a secondary layer has always been a bottleneck for using BTC in a programmable environment,” Citrea stated in a recent announcement.
Clementine is designed to overcome this issue by creating a trust-minimized process that allows BTC to be used on DeFi platforms without repeatedly locking large amounts of collateral. Traditionally, the BitVM framework required users to deposit BTC each time a computation was initiated, creating inefficiencies. Clementine improves on this by allowing operators to reuse their collateral, enabling multiple transactions—called peg-outs—with a single deposit.
Peg-outs refer to the transfer of assets from a sidechain back to the Bitcoin mainnet, where the original BTC is then unlocked and returned to the user.
This latest version of Clementine builds upon Citrea’s earlier testnet deployment from September 2024, which was based on the original BitVM model. The new version utilizes BitVM2, which introduces more flexibility and security—such as allowing any participant, not just a predefined set of operators, to challenge suspicious activity.
By tackling the collateral inefficiency and security concerns in Bitcoin-DeFi integration, Citrea’s Clementine Bridge marks a significant milestone in making Bitcoin a more viable player in the world of decentralized finance.
