Celestia (TIA) cryptocurrency
Since the crypto industry's inception, developers have faced the blockchain trilemma, which states that only two of three basic properties can be provided: scalability, decentralization or security. For example, the first Bitcoin blockchain was entirely secure and decentralized but had scalability issues. To solve the blockchain trilemma, developers increasingly use a modular approach to create blockchains. Celestia is one example of such blockchain networks.
What is Celestia?
Celestia is a scalable modular decentralized network that provides data availability and consensus. The protocol developers introduced an innovative modular architecture based on data availability sampling (DAS), making Celestia the fifth and currently the latest generation of blockchains. The system was developed by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, together with Celestia Labs co-founder Mustafa Al-Bassam.
With a valuation of $1bn in 2021, the blockchain platform has raised $55m from high-profile funds such as Pantera Capital, Delphy, Jump Crypto, Galaxy Digital and Bain Capital, indicating high investor interest in Celestia.
Celestia's team includes former employees of major companies such as Google, Amazon and Oracle and those involved in developing the Ethereum and Cosmos blockchain networks.
How does Celestia work?
In old-generation blockchains like Ethereum, incomplete nodes (light clients) can only upload block headers, but the rest of the data will be hidden. This approach is insecure because light nodes cannot recognise a malicious transaction. Only full nodes load a complete block of data into the blockchain, but along with this, the amount of resources consumed increases, resulting in poor network performance.
With DAS, the Celestia blockchain does not require the entire block to be loaded when checking data availability; in other words, it allows only selective information to be checked without compromising security, thus increasing the scalability and throughput of the decentralized network. The Celestia blockchain is designed so that as the number of users grows, so does the network's performance.
Each module of the Celestia blockchain fulfils its function, and consensus participants are divided into roles: consensus nodes, data availability nodes and light clients. At the same time, any network member can independently deploy its blockchain based on the Celestia protocol. Modularity provides many blockchain development tools, including Rust, Solidity and Golang programming languages.
Thanks to its modular architecture, the Celestia blockchain can be combined with other blockchains to form a single ecosystem, thereby increasing overall performance.
Celestia ecosystem
The ecosystem of this project includes about 50 including well-known and large crypto projects. Let's list the most famous among them:
- AltLayer's "Rollups-as-a-Service" blockchain platform, which is particularly renowned among "drophunters" expecting a retrodrop from this project, and Eclipse;
- Axelar's cross-chain solutions for asset transfers between blockchains;
- A decentralized exchange based on Osmosis' proprietary network;
- Leading cryptocurrency wallets in the Cosmos ecosystem Keplr and Cosmostation;
- DeFi protocols Catalyst, Duality and Crescent;
- "Blockchain for Applications" based on Dymension's rollup technology, compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM);
- Manta Network infrastructure blockchain and many others.
The Celestia blockchain is part of the Cosmos IBC ecosystem, which provides developers with tools to create interoperable (interoperable) blockchain networks.
TIA cryptocurrency
TIA is the native cryptocurrency of the Celestia platform, used to pay for gas in all transactions. The token was issued immediately after the launch of the leading network at the end of October 2023.
In addition to paying fees, TIA holders can contribute tokens to token staking and earn revenue, participate in the platform's management by voting for proposals, and pay for data spaces.
The tokens were distributed in a genesis drop to ATOM and OSMO token stakes and active users of EVM networks. The tokens received more than 780,000 addresses. 60 million TIA — 6% of the total token issuance - was allocated for the genesis-drop.
They were poured on significant exchanges on the same day after the airdrop, such as Binance and OKX. Now, the token is traded on other well-known crypto exchanges such as Coinbase, ByBit, Bitfinex, Kraken, HTC, KuCoin, Gate.io and others.
Immediately after listing, the price consolidated above $2 and has continued to rise ever since, reaching $6.62 at the time of writing amidst the general bullishness in the crypto market. In November, the price reached an all-time high of $7.12.
There are currently 141 million TIAs on the market, or 14.1% of the maximum number of tokens, and the token capitalisation has reached almost $1 billion even though not even a month has passed since they were listed on exchanges.
Celestia's prospects
Given the funding from such notable funds as Galaxy, Polychain and Jump Crypto, as well as a strong team with a wealth of experience and innovative technology, there is little doubt about the project's future success.
The team has already completed all stages of the 2023 roadmap and launched the core network, but nothing is known about the project's plans. However, the support of major exchanges and the growing rate after the launch already says a lot about the prospects: tokens of other expected projects like Aptos, Sui and Arbitrum have not yet been able to show positive dynamics after the launch, despite the growing crypto market.
