Mustafa Al-Bassam was a Ph.D. student in computer science in 2019 at University College London when he published a paper titled “LazyLedger.”
Not intended for the lazy reader, the article went on to describe, in excruciatingly complex terms and Greek mathematical characters, what was at the time a radical rethinking of how blockchains could work: separating the different functions of a distributed ledger – especially the way users perform searches. the network for data – in different ‘application layers’. A key benefit would be that it minimizes the overall resources required to run the main blockchain.
Al-Bassam is now CEO of Celestia Labs, the main developer behind the Celestia project, which was launched this week as a new “data availability” network and in several statements heralded this achievement as the beginning of a new “modular era” in the world of data availability. blockchain architecture.
It is believed that a primary use case for Celestia will be to relieve the Ethereum blockchain of the burden of storing and transmitting large amounts of data produced by the rapidly growing ecosystem of ‘layer 2’ networks known as ‘rollups ‘, where users make cheaper and faster transactions.
“The theory is that Celestia can become the backbone for a highly scalable and interoperable network of rollups and, most importantly, achieve this modular vision without sacrificing decentralization or security,” wrote Christine Kim, a vice president of research at the crypto company Galaxy, in an October 19 report.
Of course, this being crypto, the primary focus of most coverage (and social media posts) has been on the project’s buzzy airdrop on Tuesday of some 60 million of the original TIA tokens, or about 6% of the supply , with a final count. of approximately 191,391 claims. Another 140 million tokens will be allocated to future initiatives.
Read more: Celestia Airdrops TIA Token as Network Goes Live, Claiming Beginning of ‘Modular Era’
The airdrop was so highly anticipated that traders speculated on the price using pre-launch futures contracts in the lead-up to the giveaway. According to the website CoinMarketCap, the TIA token has already been listed on a large number of crypto exchanges, including Binance, KuCoin, Kraken, Bybit and MEXC.
Late Tuesday, CoinMarketCap listed the project’s circulating supply of TIA tokens at around 141 million, priced at $2.44 each, for a market cap of $344 million.
The airdropped tokens represent a portion of the total 1 billion minted tokens, and because this is crypto, just over half of them will be allocated to early investors and initial contributors. Many of these are locked in for now: Seed investors will receive their tokens evenly between October 2024 and October 2025, with initial core contributors receiving their tokens until October 2026.
The TIA airdrop is one of the largest in the crypto industry in the past year, and of course a large airdrop does not guarantee the ultimate success of a project.
Two giant projects, Sui and Aptos, both layer 1 blockchains staffed by former Meta employees, share similarities with Celestia in that they have dropped tokens to developers and test network users, but they have struggled to gain market share from the likes of Ethereum.
Aptos rose to a market cap of $2.9 billion upon the release of its main network, while Sui debuted at $750 million. But despite the inflated token values, the total amount of capital committed on both blockchains has failed to exceed $100 million.
What does Celestia do?
On Tuesday, Another poster asked where they could dump the airdropped tokens. Jesse Pollak, who oversees Coinbase’s new Base layer-2 blockchain on top of Ethereum, congratulated him.
Such euphoria may have served to obscure the reality of how difficult the project is to understand.
“Data availability” is such an arcane term that even Dankrad Feist, an Ethereum Foundation researcher who is the namesake of the equally arcane blockchain concept “dankharding,” recently said he found it too confusing.
Sean Farrell, a crypto analyst at FundStat, simplified it for investors in a note on Tuesday: Data availability “allows network nodes to download, store and access transaction information for verification.”
The big idea is that Celestia aims to help solve the scalability and stability issues that have plagued monolithic blockchains like Ethereum and Solana – in part by creating a new venue to host and access the massive amounts of data created by the rapidly growing ecosystems of ‘layer 2’ networks. work on top of primary “layer 1” blockchains.
Data availability is considered so crucial to easing the load on Ethereum that two rival projects, Avail and EigenDA, are working on it alongside Celestia. Avail is led by former Polygon co-founder Anurag Arjun, while EigenDA is a project of EigenLayer, led by Sreeram Kannan, associate professor at the University of Washington.
The push to build these new networks reflects developers’ push this year for a “modular blockchain” architecture that separates a blockchain’s core functions – consensus, settlement, data availability and execution – and then segments them into layers that drive efficiency to guarantee.
“It is the beginning of a new era,” the Celestia Foundation, which supports the network’s development, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “The Modular Era.”
Read more: What is Ethereum’s ‘data availability’ problem and why does it matter?
How does Celestia work?
According to Celestia’s project documentation, the TIA tokens represent “an essential part of how developers build on the first modular blockchain network.”
To use Celestia for data availability, rollup developers submit a type of transaction to the network known as “PayForBlobs” for a fee, denominated in TIA.
Modular blockchains are designed with an emphasis on using specific channels for speed and execution, as opposed to monolithic blockchains that can only scale at the expense of decentralization or security.
“Instead of one blockchain doing everything, modular blockchains specialize and optimize to perform a particular function,” Celestia spokesperson Ekram Ahmed told CoinDesk.
Al-Bassam, the former Ph.D. student who founded Celestia co-authored three academic books with the famous Ethereum founder. Vitalik Buterine. In a talk earlier this year, Buterin touted Celestia as a scaling solution for Ethereum rollups.
On Tuesday, the official Celestia account posted on
What sets Celestia apart from other blockchains?
“The availability of data answers the question,” Ahmed replied before emphasizing the importance of verifying data on a blockchain. “Users of a monolithic blockchain typically download all data to check whether it is available.”
Currently, this issue isn’t necessarily at the forefront of Ethereum or Solana users, but that could be because neither blockchain has scaled to the masses. Ethereum processes an average of about 1 million transactions per day, according to ycharts, with Solana accounting for a fraction of that.
Last week, fund manager VanEck modeled a scenario in which Solana would reach 100 million users. If blockchains manage to reach this level, projects like Celestia will want to ensure that the data for each blockchain node is verified and validated.
“Modular chains solve this problem by allowing users to verify very large blocks using a technology called data availability sampling,” Ahmed said.
Celestia’s flagship is data availability sampling (DAS) – a way to verify all data available on a blockchain.
Intended users include those who use so-called light nodes – which can run on small computers that don’t require enormous amounts of computing power or data storage capacity – and who can then verify data availability without having to download all the data for a block. These light nodes perform several rounds of random sampling of block data. As more rounds are completed, it increases confidence that the data is available.
“Once the light node successfully reaches a predetermined confidence level, for example 99%, it will consider the block data as available,” Ahmed concluded.
If Al-Bassam’s vision eventually becomes a reality, everyday crypto users could interact with Celestia without even knowing it. And understand everything? Seems a lot less likely.
