What is Celestia?
A complete beginner's guide to how Celestia works, its key benefits, and how anyone in the world will be able to create their own blockchain in minutes.
Celestia is a new technology that powers, scales and secures Web3 applications. To achieve this, Celestia introduces a new modular blockchain architecture that solves the core scaling problems of today’s blockchains.
Confused?
Let’s walk through the basics, step-by-step.
But what’s 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 function. This specialization provides breakthroughs in scalability, flexibility, and interoperability, enabling developers to build blockchain applications for mass adoption.
How is Celestia different from Bitcoin and Ethereum?
If Bitcoin is a calculator and Ethereum is a computer, then Celestia is a cloud computer.
Bitcoin showed that it was possible to build a decentralized application but was very limited in what it could be used to build.
Ethereum showed that it was possible to build a programmable blockchain that anyone could use to launch a decentralized application. Celestia will show that it is possible to build a network that enables anyone to launch their own blockchain.
What’s a good analogy of Celestia?
Think of Celestia as a power grid, except instead of providing electricity, Celestia provides the essential resource to power a blockchain: consensus and data availability. Similar to how anyone can plug into an electricity grid to power their appliance, anyone can plug into Celestia’s network to power their own blockchain. The Celestia token is the currency you use to pay for electricity.
Why would I use Celestia?
Build blockchains easily
Celestia reduces the cost of deploying and maintaining your own blockchain.
Provides flexibility
Customize your application in a way that suits your needs.
Higher scale
Unlock access to web3 applications for everyone with more blockspace.
What is data availability and why does it matter?
Data availability is critical to the security of any blockchain because it ensures that anyone can inspect the ledger of transactions and verify it. Data availability answers the question, has the data for this blockchain been published?
Users of a monolithic blockchain download all the data to check that it is available.
As blocks get bigger, it becomes impractical for normal users to download all the data meaning that they can’t verify the chain. Modular chains solve this problem by making it possible for users to verify very large blocks using a technology called data availability sampling.
What are rollups and how do they work with Celestia?
Rollups are a type of blockchain that offload some work to a layer 1 like Celestia. Rollups host apps and process user transactions. By hosting apps across many different rollups, apps do not have to compete for computational resources with each other.
Once rollup transactions get processed, they are then published to Celestia. Celestia’s job is to order those transactions and check that they are available to download.
Modularism, not maximalism
For years, crypto has endured a monolithic blockchain loop. Each new L1 has built a walled-off system, where competition is fierce and zero-sum. This leads to maximalism as they all fight over users in their ecosystems.
Modular blockchains create a collaborative environment with many connected chains. Each new user that a modular blockchain brings in creates value for the whole modular ecosystem, not just a single L1. Modular blockchains collaborate while monolithic L1s compete.
Modularism, not maximalism.
Layer 0 is social consensus
To us, the most important layer in blockchains is social consensus. Blockchains are a tool to allow communities of people to socially coordinate in a sovereign way. Thus, our vision stems from a deeply held core belief: communities have an inalienable right to independently self-organize.
Modular blockchains for sovereign communities.