Celestia, a leading network and one of the few modular blockchains, is making significant strides. Less than a year after transitioning to the mainnet following months of rigorous testing, the platform is embarking on ambitious plans to scale its base layer and enhance data availability.
In a recent announcement, Celestia’s core developers revealed preparations for the next phase, which includes the introduction of 1 GB blocks. This bold move aims to scale on-chain capacity and significantly boost throughput. The implementation of 1 GB blocks will leverage Celestia’s modular architecture, distinguishing it from legacy networks like Ethereum, which face scaling challenges and depend heavily on off-chain solutions such as Base and StarkNet. Celestia’s approach maintains scalability and flexibility, avoiding common hurdles encountered by older networks.
With the scaling increase provided by the 1 GB blocks, Celestia stated that developers would have greater freedom to build diverse applications. Unlike other platforms that confine developers to a specific programming language, Celestia’s modular architecture supports versatility, allowing developers to work in languages they are comfortable with.
To achieve the 1 GB blocks, Celestia plans to introduce several innovations, including content-addressable mempools and compact blocks. Additionally, the platform will deploy internally sharding nodes and enhance its data availability sampling protocol. Despite these promising developments, the native currency TIA has been experiencing a significant decline. Price data indicates that after peaking at $21 in February, TIA has plummeted over 80%, with bears dominating the market.
Currently, TIA faces intense selling pressure, potentially negating progress since its listing on Binance in early November. A major concern is the upcoming token unlock scheduled for October 30, which could exacerbate the selling pressure due to the anticipated increase in supply. Today, the platform will release 175 million TIA, which is 16.5% of the total supply, followed by a daily release of 1 million TIA starting November 1. By next year, Token Unlocks—a monitoring platform—projects that TIA’s supply will nearly quadruple. If demand remains stagnant, this influx in supply could drive prices below the lows seen in November 2023.
