Celestia
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• https://twitter.com/CelestiaOrg
Celestia (formerly known as Lazy Ledger) is a blockchain which is focused on providing a data availability layer as a separate module that allows democratizing the deployment of a network without losses in decentralization, scalability and security.
Celestia is powered by the augmented Tendermint consensus and plans to provide a user-friendly EVM development environment without the additional cost of downloading the new consensus.
The key idea is to separate the process of executing transactions from the consensus layer so that the consensus only deals with the ordering of transactions and allows clients to ensure the validity of the data without processing each transaction separately.
Celestia is currently exploring the possibility of using the EVM, precisely the Arbitrum virtual machine. Over time they will introduce other runtime systems such as Cosmos SDK, Substrate and Zk-rollups.
Devnet Celestia was launched on December 14, 2021. Devnet consists of three main components: Celestia-node, Celestia-app and Optimint.
Celestia Labs is incorporated as Strange Loop Labs in Liechtenstein.
Layer 2 allows the network to scale and become cheaper, but using Ethereum as a consensus and data availability layer is expensive. There are problems that indicate drawbacks in the architecture that require concessions in decentralization, scalability or security. With growing popularity, many L2 solutions and rollups result in lower profitability and lose users.
Celestia does not perform any data calculations since it does not have a smart contract network environment; all runtimes take place offline using optimistic rollups. It only provides a data availability and consensus layer.
Celestia can reduce the problem of block validation to validating the availability of data by distributing it throughout the network. Availability is ensured through a method called data availability proof (DA). Celestia is one of the first to implement DA, which can be connected as a module.
This is similar to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent, where different nodes can store and transfer different parts of a file.
DA stands for Blockchain Data Availability, meaning confirmation that all transactions are validated, merged and recorded on the main L1 network. These (DA) proofs use a primitive called erasure codes, which allows "light client nodes" to check block data with a high probability of identifying wrong blocks.
Light nodes can validate block data without downloading the entire block. However, the network requires a minimum number of such nodes to operate. The more light nodes in the network, the more it scales and becomes more secure. Celestia is built on Tendermint consensus, so there can be up to 200 network validators, but this should not affect pricing.
When a transaction is compromised, it is possible to resolve the dispute using the mechanisms embedded in optimistic rollups, which are activated in order for the child sidechain to register a complaint with its parent network or the main network.
The transaction fee will only be used to evaluate the data recorded in Celestia. This architecture is simpler and cheaper since client blockchains and rollups do not execute transactions.
Celestia arranges and validates the data before sending the signatures and Merkle roots (identifier) to Ethereum and does not validate the block data from the rollup or the client network since it was verified earlier.
Transaction fees will be сomposed depending on the amount of the data published in Celestia. EIP-1559 fee burning is also planned to be implemented to offset protocol inflation.
In addition, Celestia has implemented other interesting and complex technical solutions such as rsmt2d encoding, its own version of the Merkle Tree - NMT libraries and others.
The Celestia team has solid experience in developing Ethereum, Cosmos, Interchain, Filecoin, Fuel, Harmony and others.
• Mustafa Al-Bassam - the co-founder of Chainspace, a smart contract platform that was acquired by Facebook.
Back in 2018, he wrote several articles and fundamental works on fraud and data availability proof.
• John Adler works at ConsenSys to launch Ethereum 2.0. He created the first specification for optimistic rollups.
Nick White is the co-founder of Harmony AAAAA
• Ismail Hoffi holds a PhD in Computer Science and Diplom Mathematics, worked as a Senior Engineer at the Tendermint & Interchain Foundation, Google UK and EPFL.
You can find his scientific papers on blockchain, mathematics and cryptography here: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=9gAlMQsAAAAJ.
There are 11 developers in the Git-Hub of the project, and it's worth mentioning that everyone is actively adding a new code with constant improvements.
Even ZK Labs Founder, Matthew Di Ferrante, is among the coders. ZK Labs needs no introduction; it is a well-known code writing and auditing company that has been working closely with Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot and others since 2018.
• Zaki Manian - one of the IBC founders and one of the first members of Cosmos.
• Ethan Buchman - the co-founder of Tendermint and Cosmos.
• Morgan Beller - the general partner of NFX and the co-author of Diem (Libra crypto, formerly Facebook).
• Nick White – the co-founder of Harmony.
• James Prestwich - the Founder of Summa (acquired by Celo).
• George Danezis - a Professor of Security and Privacy at University College London.
In spring 2021, Celestia closed a $1.5 million Seed round.
The following took part in the round:
• Individual investors: Michael Ng (Jump Trading), Simon Johnson (Board Member of Vo1t - Genesis Global Trading, Inc.), Michael Youssefmir and Ramsey Khoury (co-founder of Vega Protocol).
Recently, the project became partners with Evmos (Ethermint), who are also working on researching rollups and creating EVM-compatible applications on the Cosmos network. The projects have already developed an open modular stack for EVM-compatible applications together.
Celestia stands well with many infrastructure ecosystems and development teams, considering its experience with Fuel Labs, ZK Labs, and extensive technical background.
Celestia aims to solve the problems of existing L2 solutions that arise from the need to sacrifice one of the three key components of the blockchain when building a network: security, decentralization, or scaling.
The modular blockchain stack is better in many aspects than a centralized monolithic one, and adding DA as a separate layer can significantly simplify the creation of networks and more efficient applications.
L2 is already actively used by many popular protocols, but all the trilemma still lies in finding an optimal solution. Celestia did their best and came up with their own unique concept, which definitely needs to be tested out.
The Celestia team is a team of professionals whose background is likely to help succeed in the project development. The mainnet in Q4 2022 is a bit confusing but worth waiting for.
I think that before the full release of Celestia, there will be at least a few more innovations or improvements to L2 since now their ecosystems are the most technologically advanced and promising, and most importantly, strategically crucial for the market and applications operation.
A whitelist is now open for noders and beta developers, the form can be filled out on the site. It's time to subscribe to their social media and wait for further updates.