Celestia enables the next generation of scalable blockchain architectures - modular blockchains. Celestia scales by decoupling execution from consensus and introducing a new primitive, data availability sampling.
The former entails that Celestia is only responsible for ordering transactions and guaranteeing their data availability; this is similar to reducing consensus to atomic broadcast.
The latter provides an efficient solution to the data availability problem by only requiring resource-limited light nodes to sample a small number of random chunks from each block to verify data availability.
Interestingly, more light nodes that participate in sampling increases the amount of data that the network can safely handle, enabling the block size to increase without equally increasing the cost to verify the chain.
What is a modular blockchain?
Modular blockchains are a new paradigm in blockchain design. Instead of one blockchain doing everything, modular blockchains specialize and optimize to perform a given task. This specialization provides breakthroughs in scalability, flexibility, and interoperability, enabling developers to build blockchain applications for mass adoption.
Celestia’s native asset, TIA, is an essential part of how developers build on the first modular blockchain network. To use Celestia for data availability, rollup developers submit PayForBlobs transactions on the network for a fee, denominated in TIA.
Bootstrapping new rollups
A core part of the Celestia vision is that deploying a blockchain should be as easy as deploying a smart contract. In the modular era, developers no longer need to issue a token to launch their own blockchain.
Similarly to ETH on Ethereum-based rollups, developers may opt to bootstrap their chain quickly by using TIA as a gas token and currency, in addition to paying for data availability. In this mode, developers can focus on creating their application or execution layer, instead of issuing a token right away.
Proof-of-stake
As a permissionless network built with Cosmos SDK, Celestia uses proof-of-stake to secure its own consensus. Like in other Cosmos networks, any user can help secure the network by delegating their TIA to a Celestia validator for a portion of their validator’s staking rewards.
Learn how proof-of-stake works in Cosmos.
Decentralised governance
TIA staking also allows the community to play a critical role in decentralised governance over key parts of Celestia, such as voting on network parameters through governance proposals, and governing the community pool, which receives 2% of block rewards.
Learn more about Celestia’s decentralised governance model.
