Modular blockchains are on the rise, and the Celestia ecosystem is flourishing.
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Modular blockchains are on the rise, and the Celestia ecosystem is flourishing.
The widespread adoption of Celestia will diminish the significance of the Cancun upgrade.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Lisa, LD Capital
Since its launch, Celestia's dedicated data availability (DA) layer has been increasingly adopted by public blockchains. This article provides an overview of the current state of Celestia's ecosystem development. For foundational information about the Celestia project, please refer to our previous report "Understanding Modular Blockchain Celestia" published in November; this will not be reiterated here.
1. Celestia vs Ethereum: Data Cost Comparison
The cost for various Layer 2 networks to publish data on Ethereum is expensive—over $30 million was spent in December 2023 alone.
In a report titled “The impact of Celestia’s modular DA layer on Ethereum L2s: a first look,” Numia Data compared the actual costs different L2s incurred publishing calldata on Ethereum over the past six months with estimated costs if they had used Celestia as their DA layer instead (assuming a TIA price of $12). The significant difference in magnitude highlights the substantial economic benefits that purpose-built DA layers like Celestia can bring to L2 gas fees.
2. Recent Developments in the Celestia Ecosystem
1. Support from Multiple RaaS Platforms
With the rise of Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS), developers now have abundant tools to build rollup blockchains, enabling rapid deployment while inheriting security from the base layer. The following RaaS protocols all offer Celestia as a foundational option and support major Ethereum rollup frameworks such as Arbitrum Orbit, OP Stack, and Polygon CDK.
2. Overview of Celestia-Based Projects
Manta
Manta Network is a modular blockchain designed for ZK applications, founded by a team from prestigious institutions including Harvard University, MIT, and Algorand. It has received investments from notable backers such as Binance Labs and Polychain Capital.
Built on the OP Stack, Manta Pacific offers a scalable and low-cost gas environment for ZK applications. Leveraging Manta Network's universal circuits, developers can quickly build, test, and deploy ZK-enabled applications using Solidity and the Universal Circuit SDK. By adopting the OP Stack Bedrock codebase, it achieves EVM equivalence and plans to implement zkEVM via Polygon CDK in the future.
By adopting Celestia’s modular data availability solution, Manta Pacific significantly reduces user transaction fees. As the first Ethereum L2 to use Celestia for modular data availability, the solution officially launched on December 18, 2023. After migrating its data availability layer from Ethereum to Celestia, transaction costs were reduced by 99.81% compared to using the Ethereum mainnet.
Recently, Manta launched New Paradigm, a liquidity incentive program similar to Blast’s liquid staking model, where users earn future token rewards by depositing funds. Following the launch, Manta Pacific’s TVL surged rapidly.
Dymension
Dymension, a modular settlement layer in the Cosmos ecosystem, launched its Genesis Drop, distributing airdrops to holders of Celestia, Ethereum Layer 2s, Cosmos, Solana, and select NFTs. Users could claim 70 million DYM tokens (7% of total supply) before January 21, 2024 at 20:00 Beijing time, reinforcing Celestia’s narrative as a key infrastructure provider ("picks and shovels").
Celestia: Users who staked at least 1 TIA but no more than 5,000 TIA on Celestia as of December 19 (block height 360,000) are eligible for 20,000,000 DYM (2% of total supply).
Ethereum Layer 2: Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and Blast users will receive 10,000,000 DYM (1% of total supply).
Cosmos: Cosmos ecosystem users will be allocated 17,500,000 DYM (1.75% of total supply).
Solana: Over 500,000 addresses across protocols such as Wormhole, Tensor, and Drip.Haus will share 10,000,000 DYM (1% of total supply).
Additionally, holders of Pudgy Penguins, Mad Lads, Tensorians, and Bad Kids NFTs will receive 12,500,000 DYM (1.25% of total supply).
Moreover, Dymension will launch a liquidity incentives program one week after mainnet launch, allocating 2.5 million DYM to users bridging assets to Dymension.
Saga
Following Dymension, Saga, another scalability protocol in the Cosmos ecosystem, announced eligibility criteria for its genesis airdrop, distributing tokens to the Celestia community. Over 27,000 wallets qualified.
ZKFair
ZKFair is the first community-owned zkRollup, leveraging Polygon ZK and Celestia DA architecture, with technical support from Lumoz. Its Gas Fee Airdrop on December 24 generated significant interest, and the subsequent token listing created strong wealth effects.
Arbitrum Orbit
On October 25, 2023, the Arbitrum Foundation and Celestia Foundation jointly announced the integration of Celestia’s modular data availability network into Arbitrum Orbit and the Nitro stack. This gives developers the option to post data to Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova, or Celestia. The Arbitrum Sepolia testnet integrating Celestia officially launched on December 20. Since then, several protocols on Arbitrum have announced plans to integrate Celestia:
Syndr: A decentralized derivatives exchange built on Arbitrum Layer 3 (Arbitrum Orbit), offering low-fee, low-latency, high-throughput options and perpetual contracts.
Kinto: The first KYC-compliant Layer 2 supporting both modern financial institutions and decentralized protocols.
Alpha Dune: An L2 focused on “loyalty-driven” GameFi applications.
Deri: A decentralized cross-chain derivatives protocol built on an Orbit L3.
Eclipse
Eclipse Mainnet is a general-purpose L2 combining the best components of modular stacks: Ethereum as the settlement layer with verified bridges, Celestia as the data availability layer, RISC Zero for generating zero-knowledge fraud proofs, and Solana’s SVM as the execution environment. Eclipse’s testnet launched on December 14, with its data being posted to Celestia’s Mocha testnet.
Pocket Network is a decentralized API data service protocol that enables access to blockchain data through incentivization mechanisms among all blockchain participants (app developers and full node operators) and a distributed node structure. Part of the DePIN sector, Pocket announced on November 21 a revised roadmap, adopting the Rollkit open modular framework. This framework will use Celestia as the consensus and data availability layer for the POKT network. The related Shannon upgrade is scheduled to launch on testnet in Q1 and mainnet in Q2.
Movement
Modular blockchain network Movement Labs launched M2, an Ethereum L2 based on the Move language, utilizing Celestia’s modular data availability layer for scaling. M2 aims to accelerate the creation of high-performance consumer applications. The Move VM is optimized for high throughput, featuring native fee markets and embedded support for formal verification. M2 also scales via Blobstream, transferring Celestia’s high-throughput modular DA to Ethereum for integration by L2s.
3. Conclusion
Rollup infrastructure is maturing, and modular blockchains are emerging as a dominant trend. Celestia is poised to play a pivotal role in this evolution. At launch, Celestia faced skepticism regarding its business model—for instance, whether non-Ethereum DA solutions qualify as true Ethereum Layer 2s, whether independent DA layers increase systemic risk rather than benefit Ethereum, whether Celestia undermines the significance of Ethereum’s upcoming Cancun upgrade, and whether there’s inherent conflict between Celestia and Ethereum’s interests. Today, however, growing adoption by RaaS platforms and multiple L2s has demonstrated Celestia’s value. With rising TIA prices and a flourishing ecosystem, Celestia has emerged as a leading contender for the title of “best DA layer” in the modular blockchain landscape. Yet, it will soon face competition from post-Cancun Ethereum, EigenDA, AVAIL, and others. The future structure of the rollup ecosystem and how data availability will be divided remains to be seen—we watch and wait.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
Cycle Capital Research
