Celestia is a data availability (DA) blockchain designed to serve as an economical and efficient hub for L2 Rollup to publish transaction data. By allowing Rollup teams to sidestep the need to manage their own DA solutions, Celestia focuses on the execution layer of transactions, helping projects launch L2. This article will detail how Celestia works, its mainnet, its token $TIA, and what the future holds.
How Celestia Works
The infrastructure core of Celestia is a Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain that relies on celestia-core, a modified version of the Tendermint consensus algorithm. Beyond that, Celestia revolves around two main features: Data Availability Sampling (DAS) and Namespace Merkle Trees (NMT).
Data Availability Sampling (DAS)
DAS is a technology that allows light nodes in the Celestia network to verify data availability without downloading the entire block. This is achieved by splitting block data into chunks, encoding it, and then sampling those fragments. Light nodes can effectively verify data availability by checking only a small portion of a block, which improves efficiency and scalability.
Namespace Merkle Trees (NMT)
Namespace Merkle Trees (NMTs) are another key feature of Celestia. They allow the network to categorize data into different "namespaces," enabling applications to download only the data that is relevant to them. This selective data retrieval makes Celestia more efficient and scalable, especially for applications that only need a specific selection of blockchain data.
Celestia's Mainnet
The Celestia mainnet launched in beta in October 2023. Given the network's recent launch, there aren't many L2s using it in production for DA needs yet. However, a number of scaling solutions still in development have announced plans to leverage Celestia for DA, including Hypr, Lyra Chain, and Nitrogen. More projects are expected to come online through the network in the coming months.
$TIA Token
Celestia’s native cryptocurrency is $TIA, which has a genesis supply of 1 billion and a decreasing annual inflation rate starting at 8% and stabilizing at 1.5%. Developers use the token to pay DA fees on Celestia, and it also serves as a readily available gas token for new Rollups. Through its PoS system, $TIA holders can secure the network by delegating tokens to validators, and the token also enables holders to participate in Celestia’s governance, enabling them to vote on network decisions.
At the time of this guide’s last update, $TIA was trading at around $17.48 with a market cap of $2.77 billion, currently making it the 32nd largest cryptocurrency.
How to Stake $TIA
If you’re interested in staking $TIA to earn staking rewards and potential airdrops, it’s easy to get started. Here are the detailed steps:
Create a Celestia wallet — Keplr is a good choice, it is a user-friendly browser wallet for Cosmos chains like Celestia, and also provides a simplified staking interface.
Get $TIA — The easiest way is to buy $TIA on a cryptocurrency exchange like Coinbase or Kraken. Once you have the funds you want to stake, deposit them into the Celestia address you generated in Keplr.
Stake with Keplr — With your $TIA USD, click the “Manage Portfolio in Keplr Dashboard” button in your wallet. In the “Stake” center, click “Celestia” and select the validator you want to stake from the list provided. Enter the amount of $TIA you want to stake and approve the final transaction using your wallet.
Future Vision
Celestia has become an efficient L2 hub that wants to simplify the data availability challenge. Its innovative features such as data availability sampling and namespaced Merkle trees enhance the scalability and selectivity of data access. With its native token $TIA playing a role in staking and network governance, Celestia not only paves the way for simplified blockchain development, but also stands out in the market with huge growth potential and influence in the crypto economy.
Overall, Celestia provides an efficient and economical solution for blockchain data availability through its unique technical architecture and features. With more projects joining and the continuous development of the network, Celestia is expected to occupy an important position in the future blockchain ecosystem.