Celestia, the first modular data availability network, launches on mainnet

Data availability blockchain Celestia is live on mainnet, making it the first modular data availability network to be publicly available.

Celestia’s mainnet launch will consist of rollups that use the network as its data availability and consensus layer.

The team recently initiated its airdrop efforts, through which 6% of the tokens total circulating supply was set to be awarded to eligible participants.

Data availability refers to the capability network nodes have to download transaction information, store the information and ensure that participants can access the information to verify or dispute its accuracy.

On layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum, network nodes download the data from each block, preventing invalid transactions from being executed.

What Celestia offers is a data availability layer, which can verify transactions through data availability sampling (DAS) — without the need to download data from an entire block.

Using a data availability layer can increase the efficiency of a blockchain, drastically improving transaction speeds and minimizing costs.

In this initial launch, blocks will be between 2MB and 8MB in size and will be upgradeable based on on-chain governance. 8MB of blobspace is estimated to be around 9,000 to 30,000 ERC-20 transactions every second.

The Celestia team plans to increase block sizes to roughly 1GB as part of its roadmap.

“Celestia’s mainnet beta launch marks the arrival of the first live modular data availability network with data availability sampling (DAS) light nodes,” said Ekram Ahmed, spokesperson for the Celestia Foundation.

Celestia’s mainnet launch follows the unveiling of Nexus — a network of bridges that enables developers to bootstrap liquidity across various crypto ecosystems.

Nexus was developed by contributors from Neutron, Hyperland and Mitosis using the Inter Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC) and a modular security stack designed by Hyperlane.

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.