Key Takeaways:
- Celestia provides essential infrastructure for the development of decentralised applications and new blockchains.
- As the first modular blockchain network, Celestia separates consensus, data availability, and execution into distinct layers, a design that enhances scalability and flexibility for developers.
- Celestia aims to address the blockchain trilemma by separating core functions into different layers, enhancing scalability without sacrificing security or decentralisation.
- Celestia’s core innovation is its decentralised data availability layer, which ensures that data necessary for validating transactions is accessible to anyone, enhancing transparency and security.
- The modular and decentralised nature of Celestia enhances the security of the network and offers robust resistance against censorship, ensuring the integrity and availability of data.
What Is Celestia (TIA)?
Celestia is a blockchain network that introduces a modular approach to the design and functionality of blockchains. Unlike traditional blockchains that bundle consensus, data availability, and execution into a single layer, Celestia separates these functions to offer a more scalable and flexible infrastructure.
This modular framework allows Celestia to act primarily as a decentralised data-availability layer, ensuring that block data is readily accessible and verifiable by anyone. By decoupling these components, Celestia enables developers to build custom execution environments or ‘rollups’, facilitating diverse applications with tailored governance and scalability requirements.
Traditional blockchains struggle to balance the trilemma of decentralisation, scalability, and security. Celestia addresses these issues by providing a foundational layer that focuses solely on consensus and data availability. This approach reduces the burden on developers to create secure and scalable networks from scratch and enables easier interoperation between different blockchains.
By simplifying the development process and offering a scalable foundation, Celestia aims to foster innovation and the creation of diverse decentralised applications (dapps).
What Is Data Availability?
Data availability is a concept that addresses the assurance that data required to validate a block is accessible to all participants within a network. This concept is crucial for understanding the functionality of Celestia and similar blockchain systems.
In traditional blockchain setups like Ethereum, the Layer-1 mechanism is straightforward: full nodes acquire a copy of all data contained in a block, and any block missing data is automatically rejected. This ensures the integrity and reliability of the transactions recorded on the blockchain.
However, the challenge of data availability becomes more complex in the context of modular blockchains, Layer-2 rollups, or when dealing with light clients. These scenarios often involve summarising transaction data before adding it to the blockchain. The crux of the issue lies in ensuring this summarised data accurately represents a set of valid transactions without necessitating that all nodes download the entirety of the data.
The risk here is that a node might be unable to verify whether all the necessary data in a new block has been successfully published to the chain by the block producer, potentially allowing for malicious transactions to be obscured and propagated through the network.
To counteract this, a novel solution emerged from a research collaboration between Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Celestia Labs co-founder Mustafa Al-Bassam: data availability proofs. These proofs provide a highly probable assurance that all data has indeed been published to the network, utilising only a fraction of the block’s data. This innovative approach underpins the foundational technology of Celestia, offering a scalable and secure method for ensuring data availability.
How Does Celestia Work?
Celestia employs data availability proofs based on a process called ‘erasure coding’. This method involves expanding the current block data — for instance, containing 2 MB of data in a 1 MB block. The additional space is filled with erasure code, which allows the entire block to be reconstructed as long as at least 50% of it is available.
This technique implies that a malicious block producer would need to omit at least half of the block to hide any specific part, as any portion can be recovered provided that 50% of the data is present.
This mechanism allows nodes to request random small portions of the block to ascertain data availability. If a node cannot retrieve its requested portion, it may infer that this portion is amongst the 50% not published by the block producer. Importantly, by making multiple random requests, the confidence level that all data has been published can significantly increase — from a mere 50% with a single request to over 99% certainty with just seven requests.
Data Availability Guarantee
Celestia thus guarantees data availability for any chain built atop its platform. This ensures validators can achieve consensus on the order of transactions without needing to verify the transactions’ validity themselves. This task is managed independently by the rollups built on Celestia through the rollups’ own nodes.
Moreover, Celestia’s modular design allows each rollup to create its own virtual environment and tailor the chain to meet specific needs. This flexibility means developers can use any programming language or virtual machine to build on Celestia, with current support for Solidity, Rust, and Golang. Through these features, Celestia offers a robust and adaptable infrastructure for developing diverse blockchain applications, emphasising scalability, security, and efficiency.
What Is TIA Token?
The TIA token is the native cryptocurrency of the Celestia blockchain, designed with several key features that support the Celestia network’s modular and scalable infrastructure. Its primary utilities include staking for network security, participating in governance decisions, and incentivising data availability and validation.
Moreover, the TIA token facilitates transaction fees and rewards within the Celestia ecosystem, ensuring that participants are compensated for their contributions. This multifaceted utility underscores the token‘s integral role in enabling a decentralised, efficient, and user-governed blockchain platform.
What TIA Is Used For
Paying for Blobspace
Celestia introduces a unique concept called ‘Blobspace’ to ensure data remains accessible across the network. Developers utilise TIA tokens as the primary currency for submitting transactions to ‘PayForBlobs’, which incurs fees denominated in TIA. This mechanism is fundamental to maintaining the integrity and availability of data within the Celestia ecosystem.
Bootstrapping New Rollups
Intending to simplify blockchain deployment, Celestia empowers developers to effortlessly launch their own blockchains. TIA tokens serve as a versatile tool in this process, enabling developers to use them as a native token for paying gas. This eliminates the immediate need for creating a new token, allowing developers to concentrate on the core functionalities of their applications.
Proof of Stake Consensus
Celestia leverages a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to ensure the security of its network. TIA holders contribute to network security by delegating their tokens to validators. In return, they earn a portion of the staking rewards, making TIA ownership an avenue for governance and potential income.
Decentralised Governance
In Celestia’s ecosystem, TIA tokens are instrumental in decentralised governance. Token holders have the privilege to vote on network parameters and manage the community pool, which receives a share of block rewards. This level of involvement ensures that the Celestia community plays a significant role in the network’s future direction.
Tokenomics of the TIA Token
The tokenomics of the TIA token is structured to support the long-term sustainability and growth of the Celestia network. Details like total supply, distribution mechanisms, staking rewards, and governance rights are carefully designed to align the incentives of all network participants.
The token distribution strategy ensures a balanced allocation between developers, validators, and the community, fostering an inclusive and decentralised ecosystem. Staking rewards and governance mechanisms encourage active participation and investment in the network’s security and development, creating a robust economic model that supports the vision of a modular, scalable blockchain infrastructure.
Token Allocation and Distribution
The total supply of TIA tokens is capped at 1.02 billion, creating a transparent and well-defined token ecosystem. The allocation of TIA tokens for the Genesis Drop spanned five key categories, each designed to support the network’s growth and development.
Public Allocation (20%)
The public allocation included the Genesis Drop and Incentivised Testnet (7.4%), as well as allocations for future initiatives (12.6%). The Genesis Drop focused on engaging developers and addresses from various ecosystems, fostering a vibrant and inclusive Celestia ecosystem.
R&D and Ecosystem (26.8%)
A significant share of TIA tokens have been reserved for the Celestia Foundation and core developers, earmarked for research, development, and ecosystem initiatives. These initiatives include protocol maintenance and support programmes for rollup developers, infrastructure, and node operators, underlining Celestia’s commitment to innovation and ecosystem support.
Early Backers: Series A and B (19.7%)
Early backers of Celestia, encompassing Series A and B supporters, are acknowledged with this allocation. Their early contributions have been crucial in shaping the project’s trajectory, reflecting their faith in Celestia’s vision and potential.
Early Backers: Seed (15.9%)
Seed backers, who provided essential support during the early stages of Celestia’s development, are recognised with a share of the initial TIA allocation. This segment highlights the importance of early-stage backing in the blockchain industry.
Initial Core Contributors (17.6%)
Celestia Labs’ members, being the first core contributors to the project, are allocated a portion of TIA tokens. This allocation honours their foundational efforts and contributions to the development and success of the Celestia network.
How to Buy Celestia (TIA) With Crypto.com
Crypto.com offers a user-friendly platform to buy TIA tokens and engage with the Celestia protocol.
Follow these steps to buy TIA tokens on Crypto.com:
- Download the Crypto.com App and create an account.
- Complete the necessary verification process to unlock full access to the platform.
- Deposit funds into the Crypto.com account; users can utilise fiat currency or other cryptocurrencies to fund their accounts.
- Navigate to the ‘Buy’ section of the App and search for the TIA token.
- Specify the amount of TIA tokens to acquire and review the transaction details.
- Confirm the transaction and wait for the order to be executed.
- Monitor the TIA token holdings in the Crypto.com App, which doubles as a wallet.
Crypto.com provides a secure and reliable trading environment, ensuring that users can trade TIA tokens with confidence.
Take advantage of the platform’s intuitive interface, advanced trading features, and competitive fees to make the most of this TIA token trading experience.
Conclusion
In essence, Celestia (TIA) is not just another blockchain protocol; it’s a platform that reimagines the structure and potential of decentralised networks. Its modular architecture not only offers a more scalable, secure, and flexible foundation for the development of dapps, it paves the way for a new era of blockchain innovation.
As the blockchain landscape continues to evolve, Celestia’s approach could become a blueprint for future networks, offering a viable solution to some of the most pressing challenges facing the industry today.
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