Celestia (TIA) Price

The modular thesis

Celestia grew out of LazyLedger, a 2019 research paper co-authored by Mustafa Al-Bassam. The idea is that one chain does not need to do everything. Celestia orders transactions and guarantees that their data is published, but it does not execute smart contracts. Rollups and application chains do that work and post their data to Celestia.

Separating these jobs lets each layer specialise. Projects can launch their own chains without recruiting a full validator set, relying on Celestia for consensus and data.

Rollups that set their own rules for which transactions are valid, rather than deferring to a settlement contract on another chain, are known as sovereign rollups. Celestia also runs Blobstream, which relays commitments to Celestia data onto Ethereum so that Ethereum-based rollups can use it for data availability.

Data availability sampling

A light node on Celestia does not download whole blocks. It samples small random pieces of erasure-coded data, and if enough samples succeed, it can be highly confident the full block was published. As more light nodes sample, the network can safely support larger blocks.

Data is organised by namespace, so a rollup only retrieves the parts relevant to it. Celestia was built with the Cosmos SDK and uses proof-of-stake validators.

TIA issuance

TIA launched alongside mainnet beta with 1 billion tokens at genesis. It is used to pay blob fees for publishing data, to stake with validators and to vote on governance. There is no maximum supply. Inflation began at 8 per cent and is designed to fall each year towards a long-run floor, although governance can amend the schedule.

Most newly issued TIA goes to validators and the delegators who stake with them, with a small share directed to a community pool.

Unlocks for early backers and contributors, along with the pace of rollup adoption, have been key themes for TIA traders.

Frequently asked questions