Every blockchain constructed to date is a monolithic blockchain, which means that consensus and state execution occur concurrently and are enforced by the same set of validators.The issue is that it does not scale, which has resulted in hefty costs for <a href="https://www.builder.news/crypto-insights/guide-to-evaluate-layer-1-platforms-dhANJ" alt="An Ultimate Guide To Evaluate Layer 1 Platforms" title="An Ultimate Guide To Evaluate Layer 1 Platforms" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" class="">layer 1</a> and, shortly, <a href="https://www.builder.news/crypto-insights/5-facts-about-layer-2" alt="5 facts about Layer 2 - An optimal solution for Ethereum" title="5 facts about Layer 2 - An optimal solution for Ethereum" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" class="">layer 2</a> services. Furthermore, because the consensus and execution layers are unified, and smart contracts are constructed on top, developers and smart contracts are linked by a single execution environment. This severely limits developers' freedom since they must create dApps that are recognized and adhere to the rules of the virtual machine.Celestia is not like other L1 blockchains. It aspires to be the first <a href="https://www.builder.news/crypto-insights/modular-blockchains" alt="Modular Blockchains: A narrative for the future" title="Modular Blockchains: A narrative for the future" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" class="">modular blockchain</a>, decoupling previous monolithic chains' consensus and execution layers. Celestia's ambition is to become the foundation for all chains. Other chains (L1 and L2) can employ Celestia to scale data availability (DA) while focusing on execution. This also enables developers to establish their own blockchains by developing only the execution layer and depending on Celestia for data availability and consensus.<h2>Modular blockchain and Celestia mechanism</h2>The execution and consensus layers of a modular blockchain are divided into more specialized components. As a result, the smart contracts are housed on the execution layer.Celestia intends to be the consensus layer, focusing entirely on data availability and consensus. Any other blockchain (Layer 1 or Layer 2) can serve as the execution layer, housing smart contracts in its own virtual machine. This enables the creation of plug-and-play blockchains, allowing for optimized chains for specific applications.Celestia does not need all complete nodes to download block data to determine whether a block is genuine; instead, it alters rules and only demands that all transactions, even invalid ones, be broadcasted on-chain.Celestia's sole responsibility is to check:<ul><li>Is there a consensus?</li><li>Is all of the transaction data in the block published on the blockchain? (Data availability)</li></ul><img src="https://cdn.builder.news/news/11ed712ba609705ba8e6023f659fee92.jpg" alt="Celestia modular blockchain" title="Celestia modular blockchain" width="344" height="425" class="lykafe0">Source: CelestiaThe legitimacy of these transactions will subsequently be audited by optimistic or ZK rollups utilizing fraud and validity proofs, respectively. The only thing they need is data availability to achieve this.People with computers can (typically) operate complete nodes on monolithic chains and download block data to validate transactions. This, however, is not scaleable since the larger the blocks become and the more information the full nodes must download, the more transactions that are completed. As a result, this process gets more and more resource-intensive, necessitating better technology (such ASICs) to run. Consequently, this poses a serious problem for both scalability and decentralization because users won't be able to pay or have access to this expensive gear.Celestia has addressed this scale issue by enabling complete nodes to simply check that all of this data has been made accessible on-chain, rather than downloading all of the block data. Celestia then uses data availability sampling to probabilistically validate if the block data is accessible without downloading the entire dataset.<img src="https://cdn.builder.news/news/11ed712ba60978f7a8e6023f659fee92.jpg" alt="Data availability sampling" title="Data availability sampling" width="600" height="437" class="lykafe1">Source: CelestiaA complete node can download a tiny sample from the block and use Erasure coding to ensure that all of the data is there. This is the exact code that permits a scratched CD ROM to play.For instance, to validate a block in a monolithic chain, you would have to download 10 Gigabytes of data. On Celestia, however, a complete node might be 99.99% certain that all the data is available by downloading merely 100 Megabytes (not to scale) of that data from various samples of the block.Additionally, the block size has no bearing on how many data chunks complete nodes must sample in order to confirm data availability. This indicates that you may raise block size and transaction rate without raising the cost (or hardware requirements) to the end user to verify the chain. In fact, a smartphone can do data availability sampling.One downside is that the larger the blocks, the more users are required to operate complete nodes in order to download these pieces of information and probabilistically validate data availability.<h2>Advantages and risks</h2><h3>Advantages</h3>Due to the linked structure of their execution and consensus layers, traditional monolithic blockchains have several limitations. Celestia enhances four aspects: scalability, flexibility, sovereignty, and costs. Let us examine each of them:<ul><li>Scalability: As previously stated, Celestia dramatically enhances blockchain scalability because complete nodes no longer have to receive the entire block to verify transactions. Celestia's data availability sampling architecture allows its blockchain to grow with the number of nodes, allowing it to handle a theoretically limitless number of transactions per second. We believe that modular blockchain scalability is the way of the future.</li><li>Flexibility: To build on any existing blockchain (Monolithic), the developer must create their app or smart contract on the virtual machine that the blockchain utilizes. Building on the Ethereum network, for example, necessitates the use of the EVM. As a result, developers' design options are constrained since they must be recognized by the EVM. Celestia enables developers to create applications in any execution environment and use the Celestia DA layer for consensus. This provides a tremendous deal of freedom for constructing blockchains and dApps.</li><li>Sovereignty: Developing monolithic chains implies that the app or smart contract must be constrained by the blockchain's social consensus. For example, the Ethereum community opted to upgrade the EVM, but in doing so, all of a prominent DAO's smart contracts crashed. Furthermore, if the Ethereum network is hacked and your application is abused, you must persuade the whole Ethereum community to split the chain and reorganize it. This is now an extremely hard operation, which leads to massive vulnerabilities like the recent 120,000 ($400 million) Wormhole exploit. Celestia overcomes this problem by enabling each chain/application to stay sovereign, which means that if there was a hack, that chain's community may decide to re-organize the chain independently of Celestia.</li><li>Costs: When attempting to develop a wholly new blockchain, founders face enormous technological and legal overheads. This involves bootstrapping their chain with validators and stakers in order to reach a stable consensus, with only the largest chains with the most validators remaining safe. Celestia intends to significantly decrease this cost and effort by allowing future blockchains to plug and play into the Celestia consensus layer, allowing them to concentrate solely on their implementation.</li></ul><h3>Risks</h3>To accomplish certain operations, some apps require their own consensus layer. For example, Osmosis is a DEX in the <a href="https://www.builder.news/crypto-insights/cosmos-vertical-scaling-solutions-KluWM" alt="Cosmos: A fresh wind with vertical scaling solutions" title="Cosmos: A fresh wind with vertical scaling solutions" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" class="">Cosmos ecosystem</a> that obfuscates transactions before verifying them in order to prevent <a href="https://www.builder.news/crypto-insights/mev-maximal-extractable-value-Jw7sG" alt="MEV (Maximal Extractable Value): How miners and third parties exploit the networks" title="MEV (Maximal Extractable Value): How miners and third parties exploit the networks" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" class="">MEV</a>. Due to the detached structure of the execution and consensus layers, there is a danger that some applications cannot be developed on Celestia.<ul><li>Celestia's protocol cannot be bootstrapped: As previously stated, the amount of transactions per second on the chain increases with the number of full nodes. The chain will be unable to scale if Celestia is unable to incentivize or bootstrap nodes onto the network.</li><li>Increased execution risk: Celestia is striving to create the first modular blockchain, which has a significant risk of failure owing to the uncertainty of transitioning from zero to one.</li><li>Competition: Monolithic blockchains could be able to expand to the capacity necessary for broad adoption without becoming modular. Celestia may not be required if data sharding, rollups, and application-specific chains are used.</li><li>Vulnerabilities: Because we don't yet know what we don't know, being the first modular blockchain would increase the danger of exploits.</li></ul><h2>Cevmos</h2>Cevmos, a settlement layer for EVM rollups, is being developed by Celestia in collaboration with Evmos. The implementation of the settlement chain as a Celestia rollup will make use of Optimint as opposed to the Tendermint Core consensus engine that is now employed by Cosmos networks.The collaboration between Celestia and Evmos will have positive network effects for both projects and make it possible to use Celestia as the data availability layer for the primary link between the Cosmos and Ethereum ecosystems.A significant re-pricing may occur as a result of the integration of Celestia's DA layer for EVMOS, which will be a positive driver for both EVMOS and Celestia's token.<h2>Celestium</h2>Celestia also announced plans for a new initiative to aid in the scaling of Ethereum Layer 2's (L2). Fees will climb as transaction volumes on L2 increase like they did on the Ethereum main chain. Celestia has revealed intentions to use Celestiums to help scale Ethereum L2s. Any Ethereum L2 chain that employs Celestia for data availability but Ethereum for settling and dispute resolution is referred to as a Celestium. Celestiums will offer Ethereum L2s with high throughput data availability while maintaining a greater level of security than existing off-chain data availability approaches.<h2>Quantum gravity bridge</h2><img src="https://cdn.builder.news/news/11ed712ba6097e52a8e6023f659fee92.jpg" alt="Quanum gravity bridge" title="Quanum gravity bridge" width="600" height="330" class="lykafe2">Source: Celestia whitepaperThe Layer 2 operators will broadcast their transactional data on the Celestia network, while the Quantum Gravity Bridge will run on Ethereum. This information will be put into blocks by the proof of stake validators. The information will then be sent from Celestia to Ethereum as a data availability verification.Verifying each signature on Celestia's certification of data availability is the task of the Quantum Gravity Bridge contract. Instead of depending on transactional data uploaded as call data to Ethereum, a Layer 2 contract on that platform will query the DA bridge contract to update its state. If a legitimate attestation was previously transmitted to the bridge, it would relay a favorable response.<h2>Bullish tokenomics</h2>There is currently no complete information available about the Celestia token. Celestia token, on the other hand, would be used to secure the Proof-of-Stake network and to cover network transaction fees. This will entail staking and delegating, as well as receiving inflationary incentives for participation.Just like ETH is used to pay for the utilization of block space on the Ethereum network, Celestia's token will be used to pay for the publishing and availability of data on the blockchain. This represents an excellent alignment between the project and the token. If there is a need for Celestia's consensus and data availability layer as additional blockchains are constructed atop it, there will be greater demand for the native token.Furthermore, Celestia has stated that they intend to create a fee-burn mechanism in Ethereum comparable to EIP-1559. The burning fees will counter new token issues as Celestia gains popularity, which might result in deflationary supply depending on demand for Celestia's service.According to what we know about Celestia's tokenomics, they add value to the token extremely well, since the demand for Celestia's consensus layer immediately results in purchasing pressure on the token. They also intend to add a fee-burn similar approach to EIP-1559 in Ethereum. As Celestia gathers traction, burned fees will compensate for new token issuance. This fee-burn feature is a positive motivator for Celestia as it grows in popularity and demand.<h2>Potential rivals</h2>There aren't many rivals currently as Celestia wants to be the first modular blockchain. There are a few DA chains in the early stages, but we think Celestia stands out due to its emphasis on user experience and usability. DA rivals presently do not make hosting sovereign blockchains as easy as Celestia intends. A few of the options also give up security and decentralization. Let's take a short glance at the new DA projects that are currently being released:<ul><li>Avail: Avail is a general-purpose, scalable blockchain that focuses on data availability and is developed for sidechains, off-chain scaling solutions, and independent chains. Similar to Celestia, Avail makes data accessible by applying erasure coding. Currently, the team is testing their Devnet. This is the closest rival to Celestia. However, Avail is less decentralized.</li><li>Zk Porter: The zkSync's Zk Porter attempts to expand Ethereum by serving as the off-chain data availability layer. The zkSync Proof-of-Stake network ensures data availability. This implies that the data availability layer does not retain the same protection as the Ethereum Mainnet and is thus more vulnerable to exploits.</li><li>Starkware: Starkware is working on StarkEx, a self-custodial scalability system. StarkEx records transactions via off-chain Data availability. They have constituted the Data Availability Committee (DAC). In the event of an emergency, the DAC members are tasked with storing copies of off-chain data and making them available to the public. Celestia is special in that it delivers this data availability in a far more decentralized manner, rather than depending on a tiny, elected group.</li></ul><h2>Conclusion</h2>One of the main obstacles to the broad adoption of blockchain technology has been scalability. Although there are a few Layer 1 scaling options, most concentrate on block production rather than block verification. The very first modular blockchain, Celestia, is preparing us for Web 3 with its scalability, security, and decentralization characteristics. Since Polygon has Avail and Ethereum has Danksharding, Celestia is not the sole option. However, Celestia stands out since it prioritizes user experience, quick delivery, and simplicity of integration.<div class="pr-block-special">Disclaimer: This article is intended for and only to be used for reference purposes only. No such information provided constitutes advice or a recommendation that any investment or trading strategy is suitable for any specific name.</div>

Celestia, a modular consensus and data network, was created to make it simple and overhead-free for anyone to launch their own blockchain.

Celestia: The first modular blockchain