Ömer Talip Akalın I A Guide to Building Bapps On Citrea I ETHGlobal Taipei 2025

[Music] Hi everyone, my name is Talip. Uh I'm a de engineer straa. Um in this presentation I will go over quickly what we're doing and like why does it matter? What can you do with it during this hackathon and stuff like that. I specifically prepared for this for this hackathon as well.

So it's kind of like tips and tricks. Um before we start, how many of you has wrote smart contracts before like or attended any hackathons? Okay. How many people's first time here? One, two.

Okay. And uh I assume is there anyone nontechnical as well? I can basically pace myself based on it. Everyone is technical. Okay, that's good.

Um yeah, eido myself. So I'm Talip. I'm a dea. Um the founders were my friends. So I just joined the company two years ago and then we've been shipping around that time.

Um I used to be a protocol engineer now I am talking with developers deval um we attended ETH global together as a hack and then we won in Paris. So I have some experience on how you feel and how is the hackathon going. So I have some ideas and uh yeah I mostly spend my time talking with devs and protocols themselves. So if you have any questions just find me in our booth so that we can talk more. Um so yeah today it's it's going to be a bit interesting but today actually we will talk about more on Bitcoin and then what Citra is indeed and then the things that you can hack what we are paying to the bounties and then what you can do after the hackathon.

I'm not going to do some coding session here. So it's mostly I will explain later but uh like there's no hands-on coding this time. It's just more of a listening. Um yeah, so the first point of this whole thing is Bitcoin is just Bitcoin. So what does that even mean?

Uh and it's even true in ETH global aaton. So the idea is Bitcoin white paper came around years ago and then everyone is now checking the prices all the time and uh everyone is everyone knows what Bitcoin is. So it's arguably the most popular one and we still don't know who Satoshi is which is a good thing I believe because the moment you know Satoshi then the pressure is on him just like Vitalik so I believe Satoshi should remain anonymous just like the ethos of all these conversations going on and yeah everyone is trying to buy Bitcoin and like there's a huge industry around it and no matter what happens at the end of the day like Bitcoin is kind of Bitcoin even though we're pursuing innovation so it's just good to know and uh Yeah, this is like the basically in the genesis block of Bitcoin. This message is included like this chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks. It's essentially a message for the whole financial system that something is wrong and actually Bitcoin was invented to fix it and uh this is what we should work towards like a new like to the ideals of Bitcoin to decentralization to being independent from any other financial ecosystem.

This is the idea of Bitcoin and that is something we should never forget and that it will always protect it and but like I said many good things about Bitcoin but it also has some problems like no matter what we try to do it's actually not very perfect. So there are a bunch of problems actually. First one is the programming languages you use on Bitcoin is not very good and the constraints are not really good. So this code on the left is from the Bitcoin scripts. It's like the assembly like language and you need to program this in some sense and it's not very programmable to be honest.

And on the right there is the solidity language that all the EVM langu protocols use. much more. If you're a programmer or if you're learning programming, you will understand over time and you already know probably that like the code on the right is much easier to handle and write and think and iterate on while the code on the left is much harder. And there are also limits of Bitcoin. You cannot run any program.

The number of programs you can run is very limited. You can run conditions on your money on Bitcoin also on Ethereum as well. But the things you can do is too limited. I cannot get credits by just locking my money or like I always need to depend on someone else. And uh also the more bitcoin you use the more expensive it gets just like any other chain.

So the more demand on a chain the chain's fees become increasing more and more. But on bitcoin it's just terrible. So at the moment like in an instant the fees rise too much that people cannot use it. It's just too terrible. It's because of the design of the network itself.

It's slow, it's expensive, it's not very useful to do many things. It is just some secure money which is most of us are good with but still and uh yeah there are some problems like we're not happy with it. We want to do with our own money more things. So what can we do is we can fix Bitcoin. Let's upgrade Bitcoin.

Let's make Bitcoin too, right? Like Ethereum gets updates all the time. But the problem is you cannot do it because Bitcoin ideas and Bitcoin developers are a bit uh conservative because the updates happen very rarely and most of the time the updates are not the updates that you want them to be. It's mostly the some other stuff that they care mostly about. So they are not actively kind of working towards adding these fixes I call to make the network itself better.

So everyone has different philosophies and their philosophy is not to make the chain cheaper and faster rather they have some different ideas. So we cannot change Bitcoin if we want to use our Bitcoin in anything. Right? So that's the problem. I have Bitcoin.

I want to use it. I cannot use it because it's not very useful and they don't make it useful. So what can I do is I can make new chains. I can make new ideas. So I can make we call them side chains rollups that has some connections.

I can make different computer systems that has some connection with Bitcoin. And this is actually some companies you see here in this place are the layers of Ethereum actually. So they're helping Ethereum as well. Um so we want like people are trying to do similar things with Bitcoin. And what you do is you basically give your money into an entity custodian and then they get your money and they give you a synthetic asset.

And you can use the synthetic asset to anything you want. You can move your money from Bitcoin to Ethereum and then use Bitcoin tokens in that systems to do lending borrowing or u markets or u yields meme coins some people call shitcoins and anything you want. So if you want to experiment with your money generally people move their money from bitcoin to another system and then use it there. And there's a demand for this. like this is a billion dollar industry.

Um, and this is like another table that the amount of bitcoins that live in other chains that people use. It is like having different credit cards and then moving your money around so that you can get more bonuses and do more transactions and stuff like that. But there are some problems. So the idea that I tell you works like this uh works like this. So you basically have some Bitcoin which is this orange here.

Okay? And then you give it to some people, let's say me to the Ethereum. And then I give you a bit an equivalent Bitcoin token on Ethereum network. And then I say, "Okay, Ethereum, you can do anything you want." And so I give you the pink pink Bitcoin.

And when you're done, when you want to exit, come back to me and then I will give you the real Bitcoin again. Right? It's like the It's like the casino. You give some money, they give you some tokens, you play with it. And if you earn more and get bunch of tokens then at the end you can get more real money back right most of the time this works but sometimes this doesn't because the person here can run away with your money.

So in today's world most of these people are five companies or six companies or maybe a bit more and three of them has the authority to move your money anywhere they want. So this is what we call multisc. This is very common in the industry. It's not a bad thing, but it is not secure enough because three people out of five people can move your money anywhere you want. Let's say you want bunch of money, billions of dollars all of a sudden in Dogecoin or something like that and then you wanted to get real money, but then they went with your money.

This is a really possible scenario. And like from time to time these bridges actually get hacked and these people here like the mouse they get hacked and hackers steal the money. So now you just have these pink ones but they don't really they're not valuable anymore. So we need better bridges. We need better assets that is useful.

Um and yeah then what happens is the bridge is burned and then the bad people run with the Bitcoin and then you're now left with this poo. So it's not very good. So we need some better ideas. Okay. Uh that we can use Bitcoin on and yeah that's what we're actually trying to do at Craya.

Uh so we make a chain that has a much better bridge than this one or that is not just some people that can run away with your money. So we have a different architecture that can work for this. So uh so we are trying to make a chain and a bridge and this is just a short text from our investors. uh I can talk about it more later. So there's this paradigm called ZK and you can basically run computer programs inside mathematical programs and then prove that this your your computer program runs based on some equations correctly.

This is called ZK we call it's a long story in the research but the whole idea is you basically prove someone that you run a specific code and everything is correctly. This is what ZK does. This means if I make a chain tomorrow, you may not trust me because I can run away with your money. But then if I run my code in a mathematical environment and prove it to you, show it to you. Then you can say, okay, this person is not trying to hack my money.

I can see the code, I can see how it works and then this code will work. So this is the idea of a ZK rollup what it is. And uh yeah, at the end of today, what we're trying to do is make a good bridge, better bridge that is safe enough so that users are happy enough and the people cannot run away with your money. They will always be there with the real Bitcoin so that when you want to exit, you can get the real Bitcoin back again all the time. This is the idea.

Um yeah, like when we started the idea was really new. There was no one working on it. I think it was 1.5 years ago. We were a small team um around 10 people or something like that.

eight 10 people. Uh now we are 30 35 people. We grieve a lot in one year and we're also continuing to grow again. But the key is we could actually stop doing things because because Bitcoin doesn't allow us to do so. We could say okay look Bitcoin is good but like Bitcoin is not upgradable and Bitcoin is doesn't work so let's do something else.

Let's do you know um an NFT platform or something like that. we could say it but instead we we decided to try some new ideas, new things that can be valuable and then once we started to do these then actually a whole industry revealed like a new Bitcoin chains, new Bitcoin altos, new Bitcoin yields and so the the core idea is you need to try an idea that you like. You need to search on it. You need to Google it. You need to GPT it and to see that you know if it makes sense or not.

And this is really like valuable. You shouldn't stop in an idea that you see feasible or like that you see impossible. You should always try to learn. It makes so much sense. When we started everything was unclear and now it becomes more and more unclear and unclear in the hackathon itself as well like the moment you stop and couldn't understand.

Just try to search more try to ask people in the area there are bunch of very cool people. So always try to make use of them and always try to pair with them as well. Also always try to ask us. I mean judges are also kind of knowledgeable. Um yeah, so I talked about Bitcoin a lot but then why in an Ecaton is there a Bitcoin chain?

Because we are actually on EVM chain. So EVM means Ethereum virtual machine. That means you can do any operation or any code that runs on Ethereum that also works on us as well. So you can just use the same solidity code, same Viper code or same programming language or same idea that you can have for any other Ethereum chain you can also use on us. So the idea is now there is a new layer that has a connection with Bitcoin and that can do much more than the Bitcoin itself because now it is EVM.

You can run any code you want. you can do anything you want and uh in a more in a minute in a more technical stuff is we basically have a sequencer that like if you don't understand this part it's okay uh if you don't have any knowledge it's al it's also a bit complex as well just to give some people who is technical in the space uh there's a sequencer publishing blocks and there's a zk prover that verifies everything and then produces a block produces a proof for it and then any nodes can read it from the chain itself so as long as bitcoin is secure the data will always be remain here And anyone who just reads Bitcoin can always know the state of your chain and always can attend to the chain itself as well. And uh this is just a solid code for example from our block explorer from our the way the place you can check the contracts. And uh this is just any Ethereum smart contract like this is the same thing. You can just Google solidity if you don't know and then try to learn solidity programming language and then do wipe coding with cursor and wind surf and stuff like that and then just try to use these codes on our own and it will work on our chain as well.

So this is the idea that's why I'm not going deep into the solid stuff because I think in the internet there's much much much much better explanators than me. Um yeah also this is the our bridge uh architecture so it's also a bit complex if you don't understand it's totally okay uh you can always find me in the booth I can explain from the very scratch as well so the idea is instead of having these people who can steal your money what we're trying to do is like instead of this scheme what we're trying to do is we're trying to come up with a scheme uh that is secured by the mathematical stuff that I talked about the zk so that the money cannot be stolen If only if one person is enough in in from the set of people that we know and these set of people going to be us and uh you know credible people in industry and the whole idea of the ZK is instead of relying on three out of five people you only need one people to be honest for everything to continue correctly and nicely. It's a it's a very very interesting and new idea and there's already a huge demand that we see from the people and the companies and also we raised round A as well. So like it's tend to work because the more we talk about it the more people believe. So it's kind of working.

Um yeah so why are we like what are we doing in Taipei then after all this? So we we have two tracks. One of them is more for the economic measures and D5 people who knows how the chains and how the algorithms works. Um, so it's like basically we're looking for products that are that has Bitcoin idea in mind that has Bitcoin theme, but it's also okay like it's just an EVM world type of idea. And there's also the other stuff that's best BP B means Bitcoin app and uh you can just run any EVM idea that you have like from AI agents from very privacy focused stuff to NFD launchpads to real world assets to bunch of tokens whatever you want.

So you can apply for both and you can get it. Uh yeah, we will also list some inspirations in the page. So if you check the prizes page, I will also include some more ideas. Um and also I have this link in this page as well. So it's just a general information of what you can do, what are the RPCs and uh what are the ecosystem partners that can make your project better like authentications, oracles and uh inter protocols and stuff like that.

So there's this information I put you can check it out and if you don't understand anything or if you need anything just find me in the booth I will in the area um yeah but why are we all doing this like what's the reason like why are we making new chain and the whole idea is at the end is for hyper bitcoinization we call um it's an idea that replacing everything that we have with bitcoin as the currency so that US dollar is not the number one currency anymore it's bitcoin or it's not the you know Russian money or Chinese money or any money that is superior rather it is bitcoin at the end of the like essence of the word in the fundamental of the world is it easy no obviously like it's a very hard idea to execute but I believe when we believe certainly in 50 years or a 100 years there will be a time this is possible uh you know this is the like the the genesis this message was in the genesis block of bitcoin so this is what we should all work for this is what we're trying to do it like uh we're working for basically for a bitcoin backed economy and Yeah, we are inviting you to build for it as well in that. And uh we also have a program origins. Uh I just might do I have time just shortly. Yeah. So we have a program called Origins.

Uh it's a it's an incubation program that we have inhouse. So we find good developers and also good founders or developers who wants to be founders as well and we talk with them. We understand what they want and if they are as ambitious as us then we help them with their products. We help them on what they want to do. Uh we basically give them support from their team formation, their fundraising strategies, go to market strategies, marketing community, pretty much everything.

we basically become one with them and then they launch products using our chain and that's also kind of bitcoin focused and the reason is uh we want like for the for new economy and for a new chain we want native products that has the idea and has the same ambition that we carry all the time. So if you're into this, if you're into making new products, if you're into making new companies and making much much much bigger, then let's talk. We already have seven eight projects going on and we're already talking with Miller developers and uh they will become live in the upcoming weeks and months. Uh we already had hecker house with the founders as well that we picked in Istanbul. for one week we stayed with them in Istanbul in a penthouse a big in a skyscraper and then we shipped together we talked together we gave feedback to each other it's like making things together basically and uh yeah these are some testimonies from them so we're trying to make something we believe really unique and uh we invite all the devs basically attending here and all around the world to help us actually achieving all this stuff um so yeah this was the also like the last tweet that we sent from the accounts.

Uh it was basically all the founders and us. Um yeah. So by the way, stray is now on Bitcoin test net. It is a test net. Uh so you don't need to spend any money.

You have a test environment that you can spend test tokens on it. Uh and we can talk like if you have any ideas or if you need any feedback, we will be in the booth. We are three people and uh yeah. So we we will be live on mainet in three months hopefully and then hope to see you in three months or even earlier if you're going to hack on us. Let's talk uh there's a bunch of bounties and bunch of combinable bounties with other companies as well.

So if you're interested let's talk outside but uh yeah I think that will be my presentation. So yeah thank you. This was a bit fast. So if this is your first time sorry about it but uh I can I am also free. I have time.

and we can talk more on any questions you have. So this might be a bit hard if your first time but it's okay. It's quite very normal. So don't get stressed out. Okay.

So I think so. Do you have any questions? One minute. I have maybe give. Yeah.

Uh so yeah there is an idea of Bitcoin back stable coin but we just don't want to monopoly on any ideas. So also on this hackathon you can just hack on Bitcoin back stable coins and we can give feedbacks and also combine you with that team as well or make you another Bitcoin back stable coin on us as well. Yes. Yeah, you can do it but just put effort on it. Just don't fork it.

Okay. Yeah. Sorry about the being late and yeah. Thank you for this. Thank you.

[Music]