[Music] Hello guys. Hello everyone. Uh sorry for the delay. We had a couple hiccups with the setup, but now I think we're back on track. Um really excited to be here and uh today I want to talk about what Citria is, what we're doing, and what BAPS are, Bitcoin applications are.
And uh I slightly modified this specifically for this hackathon as well. So we will go over the points. Um how many of you are web3 developers here? How many of you have smart contracts? Okay, everyone.
Very good. Nice. So um yeah, just to start with some background, my name is uh Talip. I'm the de engineer at Citra. Um I'm the first hire of the company because the founders were my friends and it was cool.
And uh I used to work on the protocol itself. Uh I was doing protocol engineering. I had done this for about a year and then because I was uh you know speaking too much maybe uh I switched into being a de but I'm really happy with it happy to uh work with all the cool guys all the developers around the world um and also you know I kind of know and feel how it feels because I attended hackathons in the past we won some you know minor awards in the past as well so I kind of know how you feel about everything and uh yeah I pretty much spend all my time talking with other developers in hackathons, in the projects, in the ideas, in Twitter, posting, whatever. Um, if you have any questions or if you have any jokes to make for me, just come to the booth and visit me and tell me and uh we can laugh together. Um, today I will talk about a couple stuff.
I think I will first start with Bitcoin. Um, obviously you know what it is but I want to maybe show you my perspective on what it is and then I will talk about what Citria is and then we will go over the things that you can hack in this hackathon and then right after that you know what expects you after the hackathon if you hack on Citra. So that's the last thing that I will go over. Um yeah to start with you know the most obvious point is Bitcoin is Bitcoin as you can know. uh and even this is also even true in the you know very good it global hackathon what I mean is so bitcoin starting from its white paper gained quite a sensation and basically laid the foundations of what we're doing today as an industry and uh you know obviously price is nice so if you're holding you're obviously gaining but um is everything price is it what we should always look for like I think because it's getting more recognized and because it's getting more and more used.
Um actually it might be much closer to succeed. What I mean by succeed here is you know it can give you the anonymity give you the independence give you the financial freedom give you to resist against any kind of oppression against any kind of government in the world. So this is actually the core fundamentals that we're seeking for and these are very important and we by looking at the crime like by looking at the price charts we always forget this but you know this is something we should never forget. It's always about having a sovereign money that is always available to use and that is uncontrollable and uh you know obviously if you're a fan of paper BTC if you're a fan of stock trading that's also fine but never forget where the ideas came from. you know, it all came from um this text in the in the first block of Bitcoin, which is essentially signaling that, you know, it's a path to an alternative economy.
It's a path to an alternative currency. It's a path to an alternative work. No, forget about us. And uh yeah, like I should Bitcoin now as you may expect, but uh is it perfect? Well, it depends on your definition, but it definitely there's some limitations.
What I mean is like there's bunch of limitations actually. to start with. Um on the on the right you see script which is bitcoin's programming language which you use to move the money around or you program things in different ways and on the left you see solidity code which is I think some unis swap codes uh that I don't even remember where I took it from but the key point is the expressivity and the things that you can do on bitcoin is actually quite limited because of the programming language because of the limits of the execution environment like it's an assembly language and the number of elements you can put are quite limited. You can update everything you know and then if you even if you try to do things the fees can rise quite quickly and the chain can become unusable. This is a screenshot from um some important event someone is doing and then once the chain gets used then the fees increase and no one is able to use it.
So there are actually quite some limitations of Bitcoin. Uh you know in terms of cost, in terms of slowness, in terms of you know bunch of stuff and uh what you can do maybe you get angry and then you can throw a table. That's also like the reaction we get. But uh you know maybe we can do something about it. Maybe we can change Bitcoin you know maybe we can make it better fix the like make it faster in terms of block times.
Make the block sizes bigger. Well upgrading Bitcoin is a problem. It's really hard because Everyone has a different opinion and no one likes each other's opinion and it's not like the Ethereum world where a foundation or a set of people are dictating what's going to happen and they vote. It's more like you just fight with every Bitcoiner to make sure that they accept the fork and even in that case they don't like it. So you cannot change Bitcoin.
Even the latest upgrade was four years ago and uh we're still discussing what should be done and there's quite quite a few people who thinks that not no changes should be done whatsoever. So you cannot really change Bitcoin. So we eliminate this option. If you want to do more with Bitcoin, you should do it without changing Bitcoin. Then what you can do is maybe you can use other layers.
You know there are side chains, there are other chains which is Bitcoin is the currency and there's actually demand for it. Like this is a report from Galaxy Research and uh people are using a people are using Morpo with Bitcoin derivatives in bunch of other chains. They hold their Bitcoin and they loan against it. You know, they do a bunch of DeFi stuff and they earn money which is solid and it works you know to some degree. You still have the Bitcoin and everything is fine.
And you know you can also check all these derivatives in bitcoin layers.org park uh which is you know which is an open source project that I really find night find quite nice uh you should check it out and uh you know there's 30 billion and that was even in I think April or something when I took the screenshot it's probably even more bitcoin that are held in other chains and uh it's a great idea you cannot change bitcoin you can use alternative chains which is great but it comes with the problems so you see all these money floating around but all these money is floating around by bridges by multisc. And what can happen is you can give your money into a set of people that you don't even know or you just trust and then you can you know go to the casino earn your new bitcoin or earn other types of money and then when you come back to withdraw in your bitcoin into the bitcoin network then that bridge might be gone that the guy who holds your money can go with it. If there is a multisig of 305, they can run away. Three people give signatures or hacks, then you're kind of screwed.
That's that's really bad. So all the current existing solutions has an honest majority multisc that you trust that you lock your funds and then that you wait for it and uh you know you may end up with a some pool in your hand and then your bitcoin is gone and the mafia stole it and then the bridges are burned and this is quite quite a possible scenario that we see in other chains quite a while. Bridge hikes are very possible. So you should be really cautious on what you're using and you should be really cautious on not losing your bitcoin and multis currently don't give you that and uh you know a solution to this is and actually quite a good solution that we're doing is building a roll up on bitcoin with a bitcoin bridge a better bitcoin bridge. So this is where I got to explain what Citria is and what is different.
And you know at the end we're trying to make a better bridge so that your Bitcoin is always safe and you're happy and uh this has been in the works for about two years. It took us quite a while but uh luckily we're getting there almost mainet hopefully uh this year. Um so the way Citria works is um there's a sequencer that produces blocks and these blocks are getting proved in a ZK prover in a risk zero ZKVM and then this data is published on Bitcoin and with your full node you can always use Bitcoin as the source of truth and only truth and you can always check that everything works well and you can always also check against the vality proof as well and needless to say C3 is an EVM compatible chain so if you're using solidity you can still use it and in your contracts you can use BTC as the native asset and using this BTC you can do bunch of different stuff. You can you know uh fork morflow fork a fork unis swap and then you know use bitcoin with it or invent your own kind of defi app and then use it. So this quite quite a use case because for these things you cannot do it on bitcoin itself like there's no environment for it and you know just you just like any other smart contract your regular smart contracts will work just some examples from our block explorer and then I talked about bridges but how are we better you may ask like why sit bridge is better you may ask and the answer is we're using a new algorithm called bitvm uh this idea is also quite new it's And since the research published, it's been two years.
Um, what BM does is in addition to being a traditional multisig, what you do is using the ZK proofs, if someone tries to steal the money in in a malicious way, you can always challenge them on Bitcoin scripts and you can always kick them out. That means for example if there are six people controlling your money and then if someone is trying to steal some money or if they're trying to collute anyone can publish a zk proof and kick them up. So let me elaborate a little bit what do I mean by you know trust minimize bridge one of them bridge. What does this mean? So the one on top is your regular multisc is a bridge and the one on the bottom is let's say our bridge design called clementine.
If everything goes well on top the three people give signatures for your enters and exits and uh you know you're safe and sound and you can do your trading and on bottom for Clementine and our bridge design only one people is enough for a good transaction to happen successfully. But this is a good scenario. What if something bad happens? So let's talk about it. Let's say if three people gets hacked in a bridge design then you know your money is gone and that's quite bad you know the three people controls your money or they can censor you in our bridge design in the BTM based zk bridges what happens is if let's say n minus one people are hacked then still the remaining one person can see this and then can use the valid zk proofs of straa saying that you cannot steal this money because no user wanted you to exit or you cannot steal this because no one requested it in a valid way and then they can basically kick every single of these red lines one by one by one by one and your money will still be secure.
So the trust assumption basically comes to this for this bridge to be unsafe everyone needs to be hacked but for the ones above you only need an honest majority. This is quite an improvement we believe like here in this design you can basically kick out any malicious entity that's controlling your money and this wasn't possible before. So it's kind of like an if everything goes right you don't kick anyone but if something goes wrong you can kick entities who are trying to steal their money. So it's kind of like an optimistic zk proof mechanism that we apply here. There's a white paper of it as well like we can talk about it uh in the book just visit me and then we can talk over it.
Um like we did bunch of stuff in last two years but I think the main goal is main main idea is even if like we designed all these things this cannot win the trust alone and this cannot make things practically alone practical itself on its own what do I mean is you need an ecosystem you need some applications or ideas that uses this infrastructure so that's actually what we're trying to do um so you know we launched testnet one year ago, exactly one year and two days ago actually. Um, and then since then we raised our series A and C round uh, which is a total of 17 million and then we make all the end infrastructure ready on test net and then we have bunch of different partners that I will also come in a short and uh, since then we've been you know working together with people founders hackers hackers who wants to be founders as well and uh, we're quite happy with it. So what do we offer for you in New Delhi? might be the question. We have two different tracks.
Uh first track is over open innovation. That means let's say you have any kind of idea from RWAS from a privacy perspective from a AI agent you know or let's say you have an insurance idea that is not tested before that is not built before this open innovation track is for you just have any idea and then use and bitcoin and then just implement it using solidity any smart contract language and then the second track is more about the defy applications uh where you know you can fork an existing product and then make improvements over it or you know if you have a newer undercolorized underulturalized uh lending protocol idea you can implement it. It's more like the money side of things that we're trying to aim in this track but uh feel free to you know work towards both of them. Uh you can also visit us in the booth ask for ideas ask for improvements. Uh we're open for everything pretty much as long as it works.
uh if it doesn't work or if it's a previous submission that you did in any other hackathon, I will find it and I will reject it. So don't worry, I'm really picky about it. Uh I also made a survival guide and also in our documentation there's quite some resources that you can check. We have hyperlink, we have layer zero, we have a bunch of swap providers, IPC providers, indexes just uh you know if you need any access or any trouble just find us in the booth. Well, the final question is, I guess, you know, why are we doing this?
Like, what's the point of making another Bitcoin L2, another EVM chain? Everyone does this. Why? Well, the thing is, at least the thing that me and my friends believe is we believe there's an alternative economy exist that depends on Bitcoin rather than any other country currency. We believe that there's a chance that we can get a decentralized currency to be at the fun fundamental of the world economy and uh basically this core idea for Bitcoin side is called hyper bitcoinization where uh you know you make bitcoin as the base assets of the financial world.
We quite believe in that actually and we believe we're now at this green intersection green circle intersection point where um the the store of value aspect where you hold is going down and practical use of Bitcoin in terms of impact is going up. That's what we believe. We believe Bitcoin is ready to be used more ready to be at the center of the all financial world. And uh you know Bitcoin on its own in the current form cannot do that. That's why we're trying to bring an alternative approach that you can use Bitcoin for pretty much everything.
You know, at the end of the day, our goal is to have an alternative economy, a self-s sovereign money that is only owned by you and that is uncontrollable for anyone else. This is what we're trying to achieve. And we believe Bitcoin is the best best asset for this. But uh because today's Bitcoin is not ready, we offer an alternative approach for it. And you know again like the ideas are cool but it won't win it alone.
The tech is cool and it won't win it alone. So we need applications which we call BAPS which means uh bitcoin applications that we're trying to onboard and uh that's why we also found a community called citri origins. Origins is a community of hackers, a community of founders, a community of any interested people who is trying to uh build with us for an alternative system that uses Bitcoin on its own. And uh we basically help anyone who wants to you know we help people who is as interested as us in terms of mentorship in terms of you know founding a company fundraising uh going to market strategies hiring all kinds of stuff with oneonone support just that you know you show us that you're capable of doing you show us that you're smart you show us that you're experienced and then you know even if you don't need to be experienced but show us the courage and then we will help you. And uh so far we have seven members of STRA origins.
Tanari is a self-custodial bitcoin and EVM compatible wallet. Nectra is the is a really good design of a bitcoin back stable coin that we support. Uh Satsuma is our native DAX. Crest is an AFQ based trading mobile application that's also subcustodial. Zentra is our money market project.
Signals is you should check it out. It's an extremely good new range prediction market idea. And then Selfi is our offline Bitcoin payments. You can just pay someone Bitcoin using SMS. And Signals and Celli, we met them in an ETH global hackathon this year in Taipei.
And then they joined Origins and now uh we're quite helping them with pretty much everything they have. But the core idea is we're trying to bring new applications that we bootstrap and that we make bigger for the future for the future of Bitcoin basically. And uh we also hacker houses with them in addition to all the talking and uh here are some testimonials from them basically from two weeks ago in stumble basically uh we held our second house and probably we will have a third one in the future as well. Really really we're trying to make a family community that everyone is involved. And uh lastly, this is a picture from you know all the founders and Origin's founders and the team from the first house.
Actually the picture is now bigger but uh you know I couldn't find the image for it to be honest before the presentation but uh you know we're looking for you to be one of them as well. We're looking for you to join us. So yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for listening and uh find me in the booth if you have any questions. Thank you and uh nice hacking.
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Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.