Celestia is a modular data availability (DA) network designed to securely scale with the number of users. It facilitates the launch of individual blockchains by solving the blockchain trilemma of scalability, security, and decentralization. This is achieved by decoupling execution from consensus and introducing data availability sampling.
Celestia operates as a modular blockchain architecture, separating consensus, execution, and data availability layers for independent optimisation. It handles consensus and data availability while leaving execution to external systems. The network uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, based on CometBFT and the Cosmos SDK, and employs data availability sampling with 2-dimensional Reed-Solomon encoding and Namespaced Merkle trees for efficient data retrieval.
Celestia can be used in a variety of scenarios such as:
Celestia was founded by Mustafa Al-Bassam and others to create a modular blockchain architecture addressing deployment and scalability challenges of blockchains. Notable milestones include raising $55 million in 2022, launching the Mamaki testnet with a new data availability API, and introducing the modular blockchain architecture. The project has seen several significant upgrades, with continuous evolution focusing on modularity, scalability, and security.