Blog / Historical Archive

Celestia Launch (October 2023)

Data availability sampling.

Data availability as a product

Celestia, originating from the LazyLedger paper by Mustafa Al-Bassam, provides data availability and consensus but no smart contract execution. Rollups post their transaction data as blobs and rely on Celestia to guarantee it was published.

Data availability sampling

Light nodes download random chunks of erasure-coded block data. If enough samples are returned, they gain high confidence that the full block is available, letting the chain scale block sizes without each node downloading everything.

Launch and genesis airdrop

Mainnet beta launched on October 31, 2023, with 1 billion TIA genesis supply. About 60 million TIA, 6 percent, went to roughly 580,000 addresses including Ethereum rollup users, Cosmos stakers and GitHub developers.

Valuation and unlocks

TIA opened near $2 and reached about $20 in February 2024. Low initial float meant FDV was several times market cap, and the October 30, 2024, cliff unlocked about 175 million tokens for early backers and core contributors.

Adoption

Rollups such as Manta Pacific, Eclipse and many RaaS chains adopted Celestia DA, though Ethereum's EIP-4844 blobs from March 2024 created a direct competitor.

By the numbers

For Celestia Launch, the reference figures are date of October 31, 2023, role of DA layer, tech of DAS, token of TIA. The comparison table below lines up item, value — Mainnet beta: Oct 31, 2023; Genesis supply: 1B TIA; Genesis airdrop: ~60M TIA (6%); First large cliff: Oct 30, 2024.

Modeling Celestia Launch with the FDV Dilution Calculator

The FDV Dilution Calculator takes three inputs — Circulating supply (M), Max supply (M), Price ($). Dilution = 1 − circulating ÷ max supply; FDV = price × max supply. With its default inputs (Circulating supply (M) = 400; Max supply (M) = 1000; Price ($) = 2) it returns 60 %; swap in the figures from Celestia Launch above to reproduce the scenario yourself.

Modeling Celestia Launch with the Token Unlock Sell Pressure Calculator

The Token Unlock Sell Pressure Calculator takes three inputs — Tokens unlocking (M), Price ($), Expected sell share (%). Sell pressure = unlocked tokens × price × sell share. With its default inputs (Tokens unlocking (M) = 50; Price ($) = 1.5; Expected sell share (%) = 40) it returns 30,000,000 $; swap in the figures from Celestia Launch above to reproduce the scenario yourself.

Data Table

For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial, investment, tax or legal advice. Figures are approximate and historical; crypto assets are volatile and you may lose capital. Do your own research.