Celestia (TIA) - Modular data network for blockchain

Celestia, the world's first data-powered blockchain network, launched its mainnet on October 31, 2023. The project also issued over $300 million worth of its cryptocurrency called TIA during this launch.

INSIGHTS

8/10/20247 min read

What is Celestia?

Celestia is a groundbreaking solution in the blockchain space, designed to solve one of the biggest challenges of this technology: scalability. It is a modular data-ready (DA) network with many outstanding features.

In particular, Celestia democratizes blockchain creation by allowing anyone to deploy their own blockchain without the need for complex validators. Its flexible modular architecture reduces barriers to entry and fosters innovation in the blockchain space.

By separating the function of ensuring data availability, Celestia optimizes the performance and security of the entire blockchain ecosystem. This opens up the possibility of broader and more diverse adoption of blockchain technology in the future.

What is a module in blockchain?

Celestia's mainnet went live on October 31, 2023 and is considered the beginning of the "modular era" in the blockchain industry.

Blockchain modularity is a blockchain design concept that separates the essential functions that a blockchain performs. Early blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum all performed the tasks of a blockchain - availability, consensus, execution, and settlement.

However, a blockchain module will specialize a specific function to optimize the usefulness of that function.

The modularity of blockchains is intended to provide an optimized infrastructure to help blockchains achieve large scale. The modular design is also intended to make it easier and faster for developers to deploy new blockchains and decentralized applications.

So what is data availability?

Data Availability is the process of ensuring that data is available to end users and applications, when and where they need it.

This is crucial to the security of any blockchain as it ensures that anyone can check the transaction ledger and verify it.

Users of a monolithic blockchain often download the entire data to check if the data is available.

As blocks get larger, it becomes impossible for ordinary users to download the entire data, meaning they cannot verify the chain. Modular chains solve this problem by making it possible for users to verify very large blocks using a technology called data availability sampling.

Celestia mang lại điều gì cho blockchain ?

Triển khai nhanh chóng

Giúp các nhà phát triển có thể tạo lập nhanh chóng dự án blockchain của riêng mình dễ dàng như một hợp đồng thông minh.

Sử dụng bất kỳ VM nào

Virtual Machine (VM) là một máy ảo, sử dụng các tài nguyên trên máy tính vật lý để khởi chạy chương trình và các ứng dụng. Mỗi một máy ảo đều có thể chạy hệ điều hành riêng và hoạt động độc lập với các máy ảo khác cũng như độc lập với máy tính vật lý tạo ra nó.

Do đó Celestia có thể giúp bạn biến đổi mọi máy ảo thành chuỗi chủ quyền của riêng bạn.

Truy cập thông lượng cao

Tăng tính tiếp cận đến với người dùng, lưu lượng và thông lượng cao nhằm mở khóa thông lượng có thể mở rộng theo số lượng người dùng.

How did Celestia implement data availability?

Data Availability Sampling (DAS) is a new prototype that allows Celestia light nodes to verify DA efficiently. Instead of downloading all the data, light nodes only download a small portion of each block.

Importantly, DAS allows Celestia to scale with the number of users (light nodes). So as the light node network grows over time, Celestia can scale to the data throughput required for millions of rolls without compromising security for end users.

When using DAS technology, nodes that cannot download the entire blockchain data (called lightweight nodes) only need to sample a small portion of the block data to verify whether the block has been published or not.

Light nodes perform multiple rounds of random sampling. As more rounds of selection are completed, the confidence that the data is available increases. When a pre-determined confidence level (e.g. 99%) is reached, the light node considers the available block data.

With the help of DAS technology, data availability solutions like Celestia are expected to help blockchains like Ethereum scale without compromising their security.

Tokenomics

  • Token Celestia Key Metric

  • Token name : Celestia

  • Ticker : TIA

  • Blockchain : Celestia

  • Token type : Utility & Governance

  • Total supply : 1.000.000.000 TIA

TIA use cases

  • Pay for advanced platform mechanisms like DAPs

  • Trading and liquidity provision

  • Rewards for becoming a validator

  • Participate in governance and contribute to the project

Project team, investors & partners

Project Team

The Celestia project team has extensive experience in building and expanding blockchain from projects such as Ethereum, Cosmos, Harmony. Including:

  • CEO - Mustafa Al-Bassam: PhD in blockchain scaling at UCL.

  • CTO - Ismail Khoffi: Computer science engineer with many years of experience.

  • CRO - John Adler: Layer 2 scalability researcher.

  • COO - Nick White: Has BS & MS from Stanford.

Above is all the information about the Celestia project as well as the Data availability proofs attribute that brings to the blockchain network in general and the project wants to follow Ethereum's footsteps to create a foundation for new L2s to develop further. However, these are just the highlights from the Celestia project, the HCCVenture team researched and pointed out some shortcomings as well as limitations to the development of this network in the future.

Token Allocation Schedule

First we need to understand more about data availability.

1. The user submits the transaction to a full node that stores a local copy of the blockchain—this could be a validator, miner, or sorter, depending on the design of the network. The full node processes these transactions, creates a new block, and broadcasts it throughout the network.

2. After receiving the new block from the peer nodes, the nodes download the block and re-execute the transactions to confirm the block is valid according to the network rules. If the proposed new block is valid, each node adds it to its copy of the blockchain; otherwise, the block is discarded.

Data Availability Issues: How can we be sure that the data needed to reproduce the current state of the Blockchain is available?

State: is the set of information stored on the chain, such as account balances, smart contract stored values, and blockchain transaction history.

We need this data for a number of reasons—one of which is that without it, no one can verify that a transaction or transactions were executed correctly. And if that happens, a malicious block proposer could fool the network about the validity of a transaction—especially light clients that don't replay blocks.

A “monoblock” blockchain like Ethereum solves the problem of data availability by requiring full nodes to download each block (and discard it if part of the data is unavailable)

For example, rollups on Ethereum process transactions on Layer 2 (L2), but publish summaries of transactions to the base layer (Layer 1) for finalization.

To clarify, a transaction is “final” when it becomes irreversible. In the case of Ethereum rollups, a transaction achieves finality when the L1 block that includes it has been finalized (it is approved by ⅔ of the validators and cannot be reorganized) and the network has proof of the validity of the transaction.

In short, when a new block is posted to the chain, how can full nodes be sure that the data is:

1) Finality (all transactions of the proposed block are downloadable) and;

2) True (the transactions are not fraudulent)

The issue of data availability therefore raises a key question; how can we be sure that the block proposer is not acting maliciously?

Currently, the only way to ensure that a hold attack does not occur is to download the entire block. As Satoshi said in the Bitcoin white paper, “the only way to confirm the absence of a transaction is to be aware of all the transactions.”

However, this creates a bottleneck for scalability as nodes cannot verify larger blocks without significantly increasing hardware requirements.

Higher TPS requires larger blocks because each transaction consumes data and processing power (for validation/execution). Therefore, a solution that allows larger blocks without increasing hardware requirements is required for scalability.

Data availability has long been a limiting issue for blockchain scalability. By breaking down the traditional blockchain stack and becoming more modular, DALs can optimize their functionality to provide maximum security without making additional trust assumptions. The future is bright for both Ethereum and Celestia, among many others, as they introduce new mechanisms to address data availability while ensuring users maintain security, sovereignty, and low transaction costs. Modular blockchains are a frontier of innovation for the industry, and we look forward to supporting these ecosystems as they continue to grow.

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Data from: HCCVenture

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