Celestia Deep Dive
Here is my note from the interview between @Cryptocito and Nick White - the co-founder of Celestia, the first modular blockchain network. The episode can be viewed here.
1. Nick’s Cosmos journey & why he co-founded Celestia
2018: Co-founded Harmony & learn about Cosmos.
Late 2020: Learn about a new scaling approach - modular blockchain ⇒ Think it will revolutionize blockchain technology.
2. Explain monolithic vs modular blockchain
Monolithic blockchain (e.g. BTC, Eth, Sol): a single protocol does all the work ⇒ constraints & trade-offs.
Modular blockchain: separate function of blockchain’s layers ⇒ more flexibility & better for scaling.
Nick believes in the Internet of Blockchain vision but he thinks we need to build blockchains in a modular way to achieve that.
Celestia is the internet of modular blockchains.
Read more on the comparison here.
3. How does modular blockchain work & examples
3 key functions to separate:
Consensus: Ordering of the transactions.
Data Availability: ensure data is published ⇒ Transparent and secure system.
Execution: Application layer (e.g. smart contract) where most users will interact with.
In practice:
Celestia = Consensus layer + Data Availability layer.
Rollup = Execution layer. Ex: Optimism, Arbitrum, Starkware, ZKsync.
4. Benefits of building on Celestia
Get the benefit of AppChain from the Cosmos model and the world computer model (e.g. Eth, Sol) where you have share security and the ability to deploy your apps easily.
5. Endgame for Cosmos & Eth and how Celestia fits into that
Cosmos architecture (Tendermint, Cosmos SDK & IBC) where anyone can spin up their own blockchain and connect in a secure way is the endgame for web3.
Problems of Cosmos architecture to achieving millions of blockchains:
Expensive & difficult to build your own blockchain.
Don’t get share security.
Celestia solves those 2 problems by:
Enable people to launch blockchain super easily.
Provide share security and enable you to connect to other blockchains securely.
6. Thought on Interchain Security & Mesh Security?
Interchain Security: valid paths. Limitations are:
Not permissionless. For Celestia, you just need to pay fees to use.
Not scalable because validators are forced to do more work.
Mesh Security: Nick thinks it is oversold since some malicious actions cannot be proven on-chain for slashing.
7. Trade-offs of modular blockchain
Deploying a rollup is not as easy as smart contracts.
Developers write the software but who will handle the infrastructure (i.e. running the nodes)?
Rollup-as-a-Service: Possible solution is to combine Interchain Security & Celestia.
Read more on this topic here.
8. Different between rollup and appchains
Appchain: Validators need to reach a full consensus.
Rollup: sequencers are similar to validators but only execute the chain & posting block. Hence lower decentralization & security threshold than a full validator set in appchain.
Celestia try to build the tools and services so that build an app-rollup is as easy as write smart contracts.
9. How does Celestia scale & What is the role of IBC?
Celestia has IBC enabled.
Scaling block size at L1 is difficult. Co-founder Mustafa published a paper with Vitalik about a model to increase block size without increasing decentralization.
The technology enabling this is Data Availability Sampling and Celestia is the first one to use it.
10. Use cases & projects building on Celestia
Check Modular Fellows program below to see who builds on Celestia.
Use cases:
@EclipseFND: Solana SVM rollup with Celestia as the base layer.
Capture & redistribute MEV. Ex: @SkipProtocol
Quantum gravity bridge: a way for Ethereum L2s to leverage Celestia for off-chain Data Availability.
ZK rollups version of cosmos stack.
11. Roadmap & Utility for Celestia tokens
Roadmap:
Several testnets for testing different things. Ex:
Data Availability Sampling and Consensus.
Rollkit: help you build your own application-specific rollup that is compatible to Cosmos SDK.
Incentivized testnet: Q1 2023.
Mainnet: Q2.
Token’s role:
Staking.
Transaction fees. Celestia is the business of selling block space.
Long-term vision: Make block space very cheap so people won’t think about fees and keep it cheap even when Celestia scale.
12. Team size
40 people and mostly engineers.
13. What’s up with Cevmos? (Celestia/EVMos/CosmOS)
Idea of having a settlement layer that mimic what Ethereum would do but only live on top of Celestia ecosystem.
More news coming early next year under different name.