Citrea, an application layer for digital assets backed by Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures, has acquired Crest, a self-custodial privacy wallet, as it looks to make private digital asset transactions easier for users.
Crest will operate on Citrea’s secured execution environment, with the companies targeting a mobile experience that makes private transactions more accessible. The wallet is expected to launch in the coming weeks with automatic shielding, private asset transfers and onboarding from both Bitcoin and Ethereum networks.
The wallet will also support private cross-chain swaps, allowing BTC to be used to make payments to EVM addresses in USDC or ETH. Citrea said the acquisition could eventually expand the use of private assets across its wider ecosystem.
Crest founder Meliksah Gurtemel will join Citrea as product lead as part of the acquisition. The two companies said they share a vision of making privacy a simple and intuitive part of using digital assets.
Citrea said public blockchain ledgers expose information including user balances, transaction counterparties and transaction histories. The company said this transparency could become more significant as the digital asset market grows and surveillance technology develops.
Users seeking greater privacy currently face several alternatives, according to Citrea, including giving up self-custody, using technically complex processes or moving into other privacy-focused digital assets. The company pointed to Zcash as an example of demand for simpler privacy features and said the acquisition will help bring a similar experience to the wider digital asset market.
Citrea provides an application layer designed to give institutions and users access to digital asset capital markets while remaining anchored to its underlying security model. Its backers include Founders Fund, Galaxy, Maven 11, Delphi Digital, Erik Voorhees and Balaji Srinivasan.
Crest is a self-custodial mobile wallet that uses zero-knowledge privacy pools through Citrea. Its planned features include automatic shielding, private asset transfers and private cross-chain payments. Users can currently join the wallet’s waitlist.
Chainway Labs co-founder and CEO Orkun Mahir Kılıç, a core contributor to Citrea, said, “Solving Bitcoin privacy is the single largest unlock for meeting real user demand on a Bitcoin layer. Crest is built to be the primary gateway for onboarding users and liquidity from the Bitcoin and privacy ecosystems into Citrea. Acquiring Crest aligns our entire team behind a vision that will generate the most value and adoption for our broader network.”
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