First-class Warehouse Research Report A comprehensive interpretation of modular blockchain Celestia

Cutting-edge Warehouse Research Report A Comprehensive Analysis of Modular Blockchain Technology in Celestia

Celestia is a modular blockchain project that focuses on data availability. In terms of architecture, it primarily serves the functions of the consensus layer and the data availability layer, and proposes the Sovereign Rollup solution to handle the functions of the execution layer and the settlement layer. Thanks to the development of Ethereum technology and the practice of Rollup, the concept of modular blockchains is gradually becoming possible, representing one of the important directions for the future development of public blockchains. At the same time, the project team itself has an excellent background and solid technical expertise, and the project is about to launch its mainnet, so we choose to pay attention to Celestia.

Investment Summary

Celestia is a modular blockchain project that focuses on data availability. In terms of architecture, it primarily serves the functions of the consensus layer and the data availability layer, and proposes the Sovereign Rollup solution to handle the functions of the execution layer and the settlement layer.

In terms of the team and funding, Celestia has a good technical background and development capabilities, and has maintained a stable development pace. Compared to the first research report, Celestia has seen significant increases in both funding amount and team size, and in the medium to long term, it can still maintain a good development momentum.

In terms of product and technology, data availability sampling and namespace Merkle trees ensure that Celestia, as a consensus layer and data availability layer, achieves breakthroughs in decentralization and security. Sovereign Rollup ensures the scalability of the execution layer and settlement layer built on top of Celestia, allowing Celestia, as a modular blockchain, to effectively address the blockchain trilemma. Therefore, it will have good development prospects and potential.

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In terms of project development, Celestia is currently still in the testnet stage, and the mainnet is expected to launch shortly. The testnet currently has relatively centralized nodes, but thanks to Celestia’s network architecture and data availability implementation, the hardware requirements for operating various types of Celestia nodes are relatively low. After the mainnet launch, the number of nodes is likely to increase significantly, which will further improve the network’s throughput and increase decentralization and security. In addition, Celestia has a large number of followers on social media, and the community is also quite active, which can provide some assistance for the future development of the project’s ecosystem. In terms of the ecosystem layout, the Celestia ecosystem is still in the very early stages, with mainly technology-related infrastructure projects dominating, and it will take a long time for users to actually experience application-based projects.

In terms of token economics, Celestia’s token distribution is relatively average, with investors and the team collectively receiving over half of the tokens, and 33% of these tokens will be unlocked after one year. The token demand for Celestia is essentially in line with the design principles of a normal public blockchain token. TIA will serve the functions of consensus, fees, and governance, while being issued through inflation. Currently, this token design appears to be neutral, as the token itself cannot provide more empowerment to the network, but rather, the token needs to rely on the development of the network to promote a virtuous cycle in the economic model.

From the perspective of the track, benefiting from the successful practice of Rollup and the technological development of Ethereum, modular blockchain will be one of the main trends in the future development of blockchain architecture, and Celestia will play a relatively important role in this. Compared with the current competing projects, Celestia’s data availability implementation has a lower threshold, faster development progress, but the ceiling may not be as good as other schemes that use KZG polynomial commitments. In the future, we still need to continue to pay attention to the development progress of the project itself and the Cancun upgrade of Ethereum.

As well as the development of upstream and downstream tracks including Rollup. In addition, in the short term, due to the continued bear market, the potential release of the project still depends on the market recovery and the accumulation of underlying technology.

In summary, the Celestia project is worth paying attention to.

1. Basic Overview

1.1 Project Introduction

Celestia is a modular blockchain project focused on data availability. In terms of architecture, it mainly takes on the functions of the consensus layer and the data availability layer, and proposes the Sovereign Rollup scheme to take on the functions of the execution layer and the settlement layer. Currently, the project is making good progress in development and is about to go live on the mainnet.

1.2 Basic Information [1]

2. Project Explanation

2.1 Team

The Celestia team is based in the UK. There are currently 40 team members disclosed on LinkedIn, and a total of 46 people on the official website [2]. Details of the main team members’ backgrounds are as follows:

Mustafa Al-Bassam — Co-founder and CEO, Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from King’s College London, PhD in Computer Science from University College London. Al-Bassam was one of the founders and core members of the famous hacker organization LulzSec at the age of 16, and has been involved in hacking activities for a long time. In August 2018, Al-Bassam co-founded the blockchain expansion research team ChainsLianGuaice, which was acquired by Facebook in 2019. In May 2019, Al-Bassam published the LazyLedger paper and co-founded LazyLedger (later renamed Celestia) in September of the same year, and has been CEO since then.

Ismail Khoffi — Co-founder and CTO, Master’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Bonn. After graduation, he has been engaged in software development and computer science research. In 2018, Ismail Khoffi joined Tendermint as a software developer. In 2019, he joined the Interchain Foundation as a senior software development engineer. In September of the same year, he participated in the founding of LazyLedger (later renamed Celestia) and has been CTO since then.

John Adler – Co-founder and CRO, Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto, Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a Ph.D. After graduating, he joined Consensys as a researcher and development engineer, conducting research in the field of layer two scalability. In 2020, John Adler co-founded Fuel Labs and became the Chief Scientist. In the same year, John Adler also co-founded LazyLedger and has been the Chief Research Officer (CRO) since then.

Nick White – COO, Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Co-founder of Harmony Protocol. In 2021, he joined Celestia and has been the Chief Operating Officer (COO) since then.

In terms of the team, the core team members all have strong technical and industry backgrounds, and compared to our first research report, the number of team members in Celestia has significantly increased, especially the software development team, which now has over 20 software engineers. Therefore, the project currently has good development capabilities.

2.2 Funding

Celestia has disclosed two rounds of funding, totaling $56.5 million. Among the investment institutions are Binance Labs, Polychain Capital, Protocol Labs, and Delphi Digital, among others. Overall, Celestia has a good capital background, and the total amount is able to support more sustainable development of the project.

2.3 Code

Figure 2-1 Celestia code submission [3]

Figure 2-2 Celestia code contributors

Celestia’s source code is open source on GitHub. In terms of development, Celestia’s code development is good, with a total of 25,707 code submissions, and 8,410 code submissions in the past year. The average number of developers per month is around one hundred. From the graphs, the number of code submissions and developers in Celestia has been on the rise. In the past few years, there have been two development peaks, one in May 2022, corresponding to the development of the Mamaki testnet, and another in March 2023, corresponding to the development of modular Rollup Rollkit and incentive testnet. Overall, Celestia’s code development is progressing well and continues to be updated.

2.4 Product and Technology

Celestia is a modular blockchain. In terms of functionality, a modular blockchain no longer independently handles all on-chain tasks (execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability), but undergoes specialized optimizations to adapt to specific functions.

Figure 2-3 Difference between monolithic blockchain and modular blockchain [4]

In terms of scalability, modular blockchains will have better composability. Multiple modular blockchains can be combined like building blocks to perform all the functions that monolithic blockchains can perform, thereby enabling better cross-chain and multi-chain collaboration.

Figure 2-4 Monolithic blockchain and modular stack

Modular blockchains have three primary principles:

1) Modular blockchains will achieve decentralization of the network by reducing the costs of users running nodes and validating the network.

2) Modular blockchains will increase the scalability of the blockchain without increasing the costs of user validation and network protection.

3) Modular blockchains will rely on decentralized user networks to ensure the security of the blockchain network.

These three principles correspond to decentralization, scalability, and security in the blockchain “impossible triangle”.

In theory, Rollups are also a practical implementation under the guidance of the modular blockchain approach. Both Optimistic Rollup and ZK Rollup utilize Ethereum as the consensus layer to ensure security while specializing the execution layer capabilities of the network, thereby promoting the development of Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks. Furthermore, with the upcoming Cancan upgrade and the implementation of EIP-4844 Proto-Danksharding, Ethereum will introduce a new transaction type where users can store data in a space called Blob, rather than directly on Layer 1 as before. This will greatly reduce transaction costs for Layer 2, and Ethereum itself will become more like a modular blockchain.

As a modular blockchain designed with modularity as the goal from the beginning, Celestia takes a different direction in terms of functionality compared to most monolithic public chains. It focuses on consensus and data availability, aiming to become a Data Availability (DA) Layer, while relying on Rollup to provide execution layer functions for the network. In summary, the Celestia network is only responsible for two things: ensuring the data availability of transactions by ordering them, and providing an effective solution to the data availability problem. Light nodes require minimal resources to verify blocks and prove data availability.

Figure 2-5 Celestia network architecture

As a Data Availability Layer, Celestia adopts a PoS consensus mechanism and is developed using the Cosmos SDK, but it has made some modifications to the Tendermint consensus algorithm. The modified Tendermint consensus algorithm, Celestia Core, includes two key aspects of Celestia’s solution to data availability: Data Availability Sampling (DAS) and Namespace Merkle Trees (NMTs).

2.4.1 Data Availability Sampling (DAS)

In general, the light nodes in a blockchain network only download the block headers that contain the block data commitments (i.e., the Merkle roots) of the transaction lists. This means that the light nodes cannot know the actual contents of the block data and therefore cannot verify data availability.

However, after applying the 2-dimensional Reed-Solomon encoding scheme, it becomes possible to use light nodes for data availability sampling:

1) Firstly, the data of each block will be divided into k*k blocks and arranged in a k*k matrix. Then, by applying the RS encoding multiple times, this matrix containing the block data can be extended to a 2k*2k matrix.

2) Celestia will then compute 4k individual Merkle roots for the rows and columns of this 2k*2k matrix as block data commitments in the block headers.

3) Lastly, during the process of verifying data availability, Celestia’s light nodes will sample the 2k*2k data blocks. Each light node will randomly select a unique set of coordinates in this matrix and query the content of the data block and the corresponding Merkle proof from the full nodes. If the node receives valid responses for each sampling query, it proves that the block likely possesses data availability.

In addition, each data block that receives a correct Merkle proof will be propagated throughout the network. Therefore, as long as the light nodes can collectively sample enough data blocks (i.e., at least k*k unique data blocks), the complete block data can be recovered by honest full nodes.

Figure 2–6 2-dimensional Reed-Solomon encoding scheme [5]

The implementation of data availability sampling ensures Celestia’s scalability as a data availability layer. Because each light node only needs to sample a portion of the block data, this reduces the costs of running the light nodes and the entire network. At the same time, the more light nodes participate in sampling, the more data they can collectively download and store, which means that the overall network’s TPS will increase with the number of light nodes.

2.4.2 Namespace Merkle Tree (NMT)

Data availability can only solve the problem of data availability verification, while reducing the costs of the execution layer and settlement layer will be entrusted to the Namespace Merkle Tree scheme.

Celestia divides the data in the blocks into multiple namespaces, and each namespace corresponds to the execution layer and settlement layer that use Celestia as the data availability layer. This way, each execution layer and settlement layer only need to download and work with the data relevant to themselves to achieve the network’s functionality. To put it simply, Celestia creates a separate folder for each user using it as the underlying layer, and then uses the Merkle tree to index these folders to help these users find and use their own files.

The Merkle tree that can return all data for a given namespace is called a Namespace Merkle Tree. The leaves of this Merkle tree are sorted according to the namespace identifiers and the hash function is modified so that each node in the tree encompasses the namespace range of all its descendants.

Figure 2–7 Example of a namespace Merkle tree

Looking at the example of the namespace Merkle tree in Figure 2–7, the Merkle tree consisting of eight data blocks is divided into three namespaces.

When the data in namespace 2 is requested, the data availability layer, Celestia, will provide data blocks D3, D4, D5, and D6, and nodes N2, N7, and N8 will provide the corresponding proofs to ensure data availability. In addition, the application can also verify if it has received all the data in namespace 2, as the data blocks must correspond to the proofs from the nodes, and this can be done by checking the namespace range of the corresponding nodes to identify data integrity.

After solving the data availability issue using data availability sampling and namespace Merkle trees, Celestia focuses on the application layer above the data availability layer and proposes the concept of Sovereign Rollups.

2.4.3 Sovereign Rollups

The Sovereign Rollup proposed by Celestia is not exactly the same as the Rollups commonly seen on Ethereum.

The Rollups commonly seen on Ethereum are referred to as Smart Contract Rollups by Celestia, which publish the entire block to the settlement layer, and then the settlement layer sorts the blocks, checks data availability, and verifies the correctness of transactions. All these behaviors on the settlement layer rely on a set of smart contracts on the settlement layer to complete. In other words, the smart contracts on the settlement layer will determine the normal operation of these Smart Contract Rollups.

Figure 2–8 Ethereum and Smart Contract Rollup Architecture 1

Figure 2–8 Ethereum and Smart Contract Rollup Architecture 2

This architecture of Smart Contract Rollups makes it almost impractical for Layer 1 nodes to individually verify the behavior of each transaction. Because the proofs submitted by both Optimistic Rollup and ZK Rollup can only verify the validity of the block itself, if Layer 1 verification nodes want to investigate specific transactions, they will need to rely on a native trust-minimized bridge, which means that the Layer 1 network can only rely on the honest behavior of a few participants to ensure network security.

To solve the above issues, unlike Smart Contract Rollup, Sovereign Rollups include the settlement layer in the Rollups. [6]

Figure 2–9 Sovereign Rollup Architecture 1

Figure 2–10 Sovereign Rollup Architecture 2

In the architecture of Sovereign Rollups, Sovereign Rollup is responsible for execution and settlement, and the data availability layer (Celestia) is responsible for consensus and data availability. On top of this, Celestia will no longer verify the correctness of Sovereign Rollup transactions, but instead delegates the power of transaction verification to the validation nodes of Sovereign Rollup. These validation nodes will review the correctness of the transactions and decide whether to accept or reject them, eliminating the need for a native trust-minimized bridge between Sovereign Rollup and its data availability layer.

So, in summary, the biggest difference between Sovereign Rollup and Smart Contract Rollup is who verifies the correctness of transactions. In the Smart Contract Rollup architecture, the smart contract on the settlement layer performs this function, but in the Sovereign Rollup architecture, the Sovereign Rollup’s own validation nodes take on this role.

Based on this, Sovereign Rollup has more flexibility compared to Smart Contract Rollup. For example, upgrading Smart Contract Rollup is constrained by the consensus of the settlement layer because it involves changes to the smart contract. However, Sovereign Rollup does not have this concern and can use forks for upgrades just like Layer1 blockchains, giving nodes more autonomy.

Summary

In terms of team and funding, Celestia has a solid technical background and development capabilities, maintaining a stable development pace. Compared to the first research report, Celestia has seen significant increases in both funding and team size, and in the medium to long term, it is expected to maintain a good development momentum.

In terms of product and technology, data availability sampling and namespace Merkle tree ensure Celestia’s breakthroughs in decentralization and security as a consensus layer and data availability layer. Sovereign Rollup ensures the scalability of the execution layer and settlement layer built on Celestia, allowing Celestia as a modular blockchain to effectively address the blockchain trilemma. Therefore, it has good prospects for development and potential for the future.

3. Development

3.1 History

Table 3–1 Celestia major events

3.2 Current Status

3.2.1 Operational Data

Figure 3–1 Celestia test network status 1 [7]

Figure 3–2 Celestia test network status 2

Celestia is currently still in the test network stage and is expected to launch its mainnet soon. The test network is still running stably with a total of 261,495 blocks produced. The total staked token quantity is approximately 389,580,000 TIA, with 100 initial validator nodes. The top 9 nodes account for 60.57% of the network’s stake, indicating a relatively high degree of centralization in the test network.

Figure 3–3 Celestia test network node ranking

Benefiting from Celestia’s network architecture, the hardware requirements for operating a Celestia light node are relatively low, requiring a minimum of 2GB RAM, a single-core CPU, an SSD hard drive of at least 25GB, and a bandwidth of 56 Kbps for uploading and downloading. Apart from light nodes, the requirements for Celestia’s bridge nodes, full nodes, validator nodes, and consensus nodes are also not high compared to other public blockchains. Therefore, after the launch of the Celestia mainnet, it is expected that the number of various types of nodes in the network will further increase, and the level of decentralization of the network will also improve.

Figure 3-4 Celestia Node Operating Requirements[8]

Currently, there are a total of 50 projects announced or planned to be deployed on Celestia[9]. This includes 5 Rollups as a Service (RaaS) projects, 3 sequencer network projects, 5 settlement layer network projects, 5 Rollup framework projects (including Cosmos SDK, OP Stack, Celestia’s own Rollkit, Sovereign, and Stackr), 3 virtual machine projects, 6 cross-chain projects, 3 wallet projects, 5 DeFi projects, 5 gaming projects, and 10 infrastructure projects.

It can be seen that the projects on Celestia are currently dominated by technical infrastructure projects, with few user-facing application Dapps.

3.2.2 Social Media Scale

Table 3-2 Celestia Social Media Data

As of October 12, 2023, Celestia has a large number of social media followers, active interactions, and a high number of discussions in the official community, mainly related to technical development and token airdrops.

3.3 Future

Celestia has not announced its future roadmap plans, but based on the current known information, Celestia will end the TIA token airdrop on October 17 UTC 12:00 and launch the mainnet shortly after. The current known plan for the airdrop of 60 million TIA tokens is as follows:

(Airdrop snapshot as of January 1, 2023, including 576,653 on-chain addresses on Ethereum, rollups, Cosmos Hub, and Osmosis)

Table 3-2 Celestia TIA Token Airdrop Plan

Summary:

In terms of project development, Celestia is currently still in the testnet phase, and it is expected to launch the mainnet shortly. The testnet currently has relatively centralized nodes, but benefiting from Celestia’s network architecture and data availability solutions, the hardware requirements for operating various Celestia nodes are relatively low. After the mainnet launch, the number of nodes is likely to significantly increase, which will further enhance network throughput and increase decentralization and security. In addition, Celestia’s social media has a large number of followers, and the community is active, which can provide some support for the future development of the project’s ecosystem. In terms of ecosystem layout, Celestia’s ecosystem is still in a very early stage. The ecosystem projects are mainly related to technical infrastructure, and it will still take a long time for users to actually experience application projects in the ecosystem.

4. Economic Model

Celestia’s native token is TIA, with an initial total supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens. The TIA token has not yet entered circulation and the airdrop will be conducted on October 17, 2023. In the future, TIA tokens will be issued through inflation, starting with an annual inflation rate of 8%, decreasing by 10% each year until reaching an annual inflation rate of 1.5%.

4.1 Supply

4.1.1 TIA Token Distribution [10]

Table 4-1 TIA Token Distribution

Figure 4-1 TIA Token Distribution Chart

Figure 4-2 TIA Token Unlocking Time Chart

Looking at the token distribution, TIA tokens will mainly be allocated to investors and the team, followed by the treasury, and lastly, the ecosystem. All tokens will be fully unlocked after 4 years. This means that after the tokens are listed, especially when the tokens for investors and the team start unlocking after a year, TIA may face significant selling pressure. Based on the current token distribution rules, the initial circulating supply of TIA tokens is estimated to be 141,000,000, which includes 74,000,000 tokens from airdrops and 67,000,000 tokens from treasury unlocking.

4.2 Demand

In terms of demand, the main functions of TIA tokens are: firstly, to maintain the formation of the network and incentivize node operation; secondly, to serve as utility tokens for network usage services; and thirdly, to facilitate decentralized governance.

Specifically, Celestia adopts a PoS consensus mechanism with an initial validation node count of 100. Therefore, nodes need to stake TIA tokens to participate in network consensus and receive staking rewards from the network. Users can also delegate their TIA to respective nodes to share the staking rewards obtained by the nodes, thus protecting the network’s security.

Figure 4-3 TIA Token Inflation Chart

Regarding staking rewards, TIA tokens will be minted through inflation. The inflation rate starts at 8% per year and decreases by 10% annually until it reaches an annual inflation rate of 1.5%. The annual inflation reserve will be calculated based on the total TIA supply at the beginning of each year. Celestia will use block timestamps instead of block heights to define this time, and since block times may vary, the actual issuance may slightly exceed the target value.

After the network is formed, every Rollup project that needs to use Celestia as the data availability layer will need to submit LianGuaiyForBlobs transactions on the network. This transaction will be billed in TIA, equivalent to charging developers a network usage fee. In addition, Celestia’s Gas fees will be charged in TIA, and Celestia will use a standard Gas price priority memory pool, where validators will prioritize transactions with higher packaging fees. The total cost of each transaction will include fixed Gas fees and variable fees based on the size of each Blob in the transaction.

Finally, Celestia will transition to community decentralized governance. The community will be able to vote on important network parameters through governance proposals. Additionally, the community will have an additional fund pool, which will be allocated 2% of block rewards.

Summary

From the perspective of token economics, Celestia’s token allocation is relatively average, with investors and the team receiving more than half of the tokens, and 33% of these tokens will be unlocked after one year. The demand for Celestia’s tokens follows the design principles of a normal public blockchain token; TIA will assume the functions of consensus, fees, and governance, while also being issued through inflation. Currently, this token design appears to be neutral, as the tokens themselves cannot provide more empowerment to the network, but rather the tokens rely on the development of the network to promote a healthy economic model.

5. Track

5.1 Track Overview

From the perspective of track analysis, Celestia should be classified under public blockchain track. However, Celestia has significant differences compared to previous single-piece public chains, so it can be categorized as a modular public chain that focuses on the consensus layer and data availability layer. This sub-track is still in a very early stage of development.

Figure 5-1: Panorama of Modular Blockchain Track [11]

From the track panorama chart created by Messari, we can see that the modular blockchain track essentially includes the main projects related to layer 2 races and other related tracks, including Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, zkSync, StarkNet, etc. This is mainly because the successful practice of layer 2 Rollup has provided many possibilities for the concept of modular blockchain. While Rollup is not limited to Ethereum, currently only Ethereum provides an environment for Rollup to thrive. In the future, when the entire market has made further progress, Rollup can be deployed on modular blockchains like Celestia to pursue higher freedom, faster efficiency, and lower costs. Therefore, in the future, we need to pay attention not only to the development of Celestia itself, but also to related tracks, especially the development of the Rollup track in order to promote the realization of the Celestia modular blockchain concept.

5.2 Track Competitors

In terms of competitors, the main competitors of Celestia are Ethereum after Proto-Danksharding, Polygon Avail, EigenDA, Arbitrum Nova, and zkPorter.

There are slight differences among these competitors in terms of data availability implementation, mainly reflected in the data recovery method and data sampling method.

Celestia uses data availability sampling, employing a two-dimensional RS erasure coding scheme to ensure data recoverability. Light nodes obtain block data through random sampling and submit data availability proofs in an optimistic manner. Currently, both RS erasure coding and the practice of optimistic proofs have achieved good maturity.

Ethereum’s Proto-Danksharding also uses data availability sampling (DAS) scheme and utilizes RS erasure coding to ensure data recoverability. However, unlike Celestia, Ethereum will adopt the KZG commitment scheme for data availability proof. KZG (Kate Zaverucha Goldberg) polynomial commitment is a zero-knowledge proof system. Similar to the difference between Optimistic Rollup and ZK Rollup, the technology threshold for Optimistic proofs is lower, while KZG polynomial commitment, although has a higher technology threshold, provides faster proof submission. Ethereum’s Proto-Danksharding is expected to be deployed during the Cancun upgrade in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Polygon Avail has recently emerged as an independent project from Polygon, adopting a data availability sampling scheme similar to Proto-Danksharding, with RS error-correcting code encoding and KZG polynomial commitments. Avail is currently in the testnet phase, but important information regarding the incentive testnet and token economics will be released soon.

EigenDA is the flagship product of Eigenlayer, with a solution derived from Ethereum’s Proto-Danksharding. It also utilizes RS error-correcting code encoding and KZG polynomial commitments. EigenDA is still in the testnet phase, with the testnet set to go live at the end of August 2023, so the mainnet launch is still some time away.

Arbitrum Nova differs from the four projects mentioned above in its data availability implementation. It utilizes a Data Availability Committee, an external entity responsible for storing and providing transaction data. At least six committee members (with a total of seven members) submit BLS signatures to ensure data reliability. Compared to data availability sampling (DAS), the committee approach has lower costs but sacrifices decentralization and security. Arbitrum Nova is already live on the mainnet, but it does not compete with the aforementioned projects; it represents another data availability solution.

zkPorter, proposed by zkSync, is a more complex data availability solution compared to others. It combines ZK Rollup and sharding to address data availability issues. It can support multiple shards, and each shard can select and set its own data availability scheme, providing greater flexibility for smart contract development. zkPorter has already been launched on the mainnet with zkSync Era, but it does not compete with the aforementioned projects; it represents another data availability solution.

Currently, the most popular data availability solution among all implementations is the combination of data availability sampling and KZG polynomial commitments. It reduces node costs, improves proof efficiency, and ensures data availability. Celestia’s choice of the Optimistic proof has a lower implementation threshold compared to KZG polynomial commitments, and it has higher technological maturity. However, its future technical limits are not as high as KZG polynomial commitments. Compared to Avail and EigenDA, Celestia has a faster development progress and will land on the mainnet earlier. However, after the Cancun upgrade, Celestia will also face direct competition from Ethereum.

Summary

Looking at the field, modular blockchains will be one of the main trends in the future blockchain architecture development, benefiting from the success of Rollup and Ethereum’s technological advancements. Celestia will play a relatively important role in this field. Compared to current competitors, Celestia has a lower implementation threshold and faster development progress in terms of data availability. However, its upper limit may not be as high as other solutions using KZG polynomial commitments. It is necessary to continue monitoring the project’s development, Ethereum’s Cancun upgrade, and the development of upstream and downstream tracks, including Rollup. Additionally, in the short term, due to the ongoing bear market, the project’s potential release still depends on market recovery and the accumulation of underlying technology.

6. Risks

1) Code Risk: Currently, Celestia has not released any audit reports, so there may be code risks.

2) Technical Maturity Risk: Currently, Celestia is still in the testnet phase, and it will require a lot of practice to improve its technical maturity before launching the mainnet for production.

3) Market Risk: Currently, the modular blockchain sector is not one of the most mainstream tracks, and the project’s technical development still requires a lot of practice. Therefore, there is significant market uncertainty before the technology is fully implemented.

References

Celestia Learning, https://celestia.org/learn

“Celestia Project Research Report,” Head Warehouse

Celestia Documentation, https://docs.celestia.org/

[1]https://www.coingecko.com/zh/%E6%95%B0%E5%AD%97%E8%B4%A7%E5%B8%81/mcdex#markets, Data as of May 20, 2021

[2] https://celestia.org/team/

[3] Figures 2–2 and 2–3 are from https://cauldron.io/

[4] https://celestia.org/learn/beginners/modular-blockchains-for-beginners/

[5] https://docs.celestia.org/learn/how-celestia-works/data-availability-layer/

[7] https://celestia.explorers.guru/

[8] https://docs.celestia.org/nodes/overview/

[9] https://celestia.org/ecosystem

[10] https://docs.celestia.org/learn/staking-governance-supply/

[11] https://twitter.com/MessariCrypto/status/1699066238490804415

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