The State of Celestia

In crypto, new chains are a dime a dozen and tend to follow familiar patterns. Thus, over the past several years we've seen a fair share of copycat chains with little to add to the conversation. Celestia has been different.

The chain has taken a unique approach, dialing in its functions as a data layer for rollups, allowing chains to post their data on the Celestia network, similar to how blobs are posted on Ethereum. While this model presents an exciting next step for blockchain technology, the real question is, how has Celestia been performing so far, and what are its plans to compete with other chains like Ethereum?

Let’s examine some key metrics, the rollups currently building on Celestia, and what the team has planned for the future!

🚧 Roadmap Progress

In September 2024, Celestia released its roadmap outlining past achievements and future plans. The primary goals include achieving 1 GB blocks and establishing Celestia as the dominant data availability hub. Here’s a summary of the key initiatives to achieve those goals!

Scaling to 1 GB Blockspace

Reaching 1 GB blockspace will significantly increase Celestia’s throughput, potentially enabling a "Visa-scale" payment network. The roadmap highlights two core areas of focus:

• Consensus optimization: Enhancing the network’s ability to process larger blocks efficiently.
• Data availability improvements: Improving sampling techniques and allowing a wider range of devices being able to run a light node

Improving Chain Traction

Attracting both users and developers is a critical challenge for any new L1 or L2. While Celestia has made strong progress, competing with Ethereum requires wider adoption and deeper liquidity. The team is addressing this through:

• Lazybridging: This feature will enable a seamless asset transfer experience between rollups built on Celestia. By reducing liquidity fragmentation and improving UX, Celestia aims to create an ecosystem of chains that feels like you’re only interacting with one chain.
• Enhancing developer experience: Builders typically prefer chains with deep liquidity to maximize their app’s chances of success. Celestia is prioritizing developer-friendly tooling and infrastructure to make its chain a more attractive option.
• Onboarding other L1s: Celestia’s ambition extends beyond rollups—it also aims to support other L1s by offering them data availability services. Coupled with lazybridging, this could rapidly increase liquidity flowing into the Celestia ecosystem due to increasing the number of chains that can utilize Celestia’s data availability layer. 

📊 Key Metrics

Data Posted Per Day and Cost

Currently, Celestia leads all chains in data posted per day, averaging around 26 GB, surpassing Ethereum’s 2.5 GB per day. While this figure is impressive, Celestia’s market share in data posting is even more noteworthy.

At the end of November 2023, Ethereum held roughly 72% of the total market share in data posting, while Celestia accounted for just 27%, but those numbers have flipped dramatically. Now, Ethereum’s share has dropped to 9%, while Celestia commands over 90% of the market.

One of the key drivers behind this shift is the significant reduction in data posting costs. In November 2024, posting one mebibyte of data on Celestia cost around $0.30. That price has since dropped by over 75%, now sitting at just $0.07.

Blob Fee Generation

With the increase in data posted on Celestia, the chain has also seen growth in blob fee revenue. At the end of 2024, Celestia was generating approximately $225 per day in blob fees. That number has nearly 10x since then, with the chain now earning over $2k per day, peaking at $3.8k two weeks ago.

While the fees generated from blobs on Celestia may not look super consistent, when compared to Ethereum it is not even close. But why do consistent fees matter? The reason is that it offers more predictable pricing for L2s posting blobs on either chain, so then users will not have to deal with spikes in fees on whatever L2 they are interacting with, leading to a better user experience. L2s that post blobs on Ethereum have reported seeing spikes in fees, up to 300%!

📜 Rollup Adoption

Celestia currently serves as the data availability layer for 26 rollups. While some projects are still in early development, a handful have already gained significant traction.

◾️ Eclipse

Twitter | Website

Eclipse is one of the largest rollups on Celestia, with a TVL of $41.59M. It is also the largest consumer of data among all rollups using Celestia. One of Eclipse’s key advantages is that it uses the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), which offers higher throughput when compared to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

◾️ Derive

Twitter | Website

Derive is an options and perpetuals trading platform with a TVL of just under $90M and has collected over $6M in fees. The platform has also partnered with Ethena, one of the largest stablecoin issuers, to leverage Ethena’s deep liquidity for ecosystem growth.

◾️ Aevo

Twitter | Website

Aevo, another options and perpetuals platform, has processed over $58B in cumulative trading volume and currently has a TVL of $43M. The platform supports a wide range of tokens, including blue-chip tokens like ETH and BTC, as well as AI-related tokens like AIXBT and AI16Z.

Conclusion

While Ethereum remains the dominant force in liquidity and user base, Celestia is making a strong case for itself as the leading data availability solution. Over the past year, it has taken the majority share of data posting and has seen rapid growth in blob fee revenue.

Celestia still has a long road ahead, but if it can attract more rollups and developers while maintaining its current momentum, it has the potential to become the go-to chain for users, bringing liquidity along with them.