Celestia

What is Celestia?

Celestia is a modular data availability network that securely scales with the number of users, making it easy for anyone to launch their own blockchain.

It is a key player in enabling the next generation of scalable blockchain architectures—modular blockchains. By decoupling execution from consensus and introducing data availability sampling, Celestia streamlines consensus to atomic broadcast.

The introduction of data availability sampling ensures efficiency by requiring resource-limited light nodes to sample random chunks, facilitating secure and cost-effective verification even as block sizes increase.

What is Modular Blockchain?

Blockchains operate as replicated state machines within a distributed network, where nodes follow a set of rules to execute transactions, transitioning from an initial to a common final state. This involves four key functions: execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability (DA).

• Execution: Executes valid transactions to update the state machine accurately.

• Settlement: Provides an environment for verifying proofs, resolving disputes, and bridging between execution layers.

• Consensus: Ensures agreement on the transaction order.

• Data Availability (DA): Makes transaction data accessible.

Traditional monolithic blockchains handle all functions in a single consensus layer, limiting optimization possibilities. In contrast, modular blockchains adopt a modular stack, separating these functions into specialized layers. One arrangement involves a Consensus and DA layer at the base, handling consensus and DA, while settlement and execution have their dedicated layers above. This specialization optimizes each layer's function, enhancing overall system throughput. Additionally, the modular paradigm allows multiple execution layers (rollups) to share the same settlement and DA layers, promoting efficiency and flexibility.

What is Data Availability?

Data availability addresses a fundamental question: Has this data been published? In blockchain networks, nodes verify data availability when receiving a new block. They attempt to download all transaction data for the block to confirm its availability. Successful verification ensures that the block data was genuinely published to the network.

Modular blockchains, exemplified by Celestia, introduce efficient primitives for data availability verification. This aspect is crucial for blockchain security, allowing anyone to inspect and verify the ledger. Scaling blockchains, however, pose challenges as larger blocks make it impractical for users to download all data, hampering verification.

Celestia's Data Availability (DA) layer presents a scalable solution to this challenge. In permissionless blockchain networks, the DA layer must offer a trust-minimized mechanism for execution and settlement layers to verify transaction data availability. Two key features define Celestia's DA layer:

• Data Availability Sampling (DAS): Enables light nodes to verify data availability without the need to download the entire block.

• Namespaced Merkle Trees (NMTs): Empowers execution and settlement layers on Celestia to download only relevant transactions, optimizing efficiency. Both DAS and NMTs are innovative scaling solutions, enhancing the overall functionality of Celestia's blockchain architecture.

Leveraging Celestia for Ancient8 Chain

Ancient8 Chain stands to benefit significantly from Celestia's Data Availability (DA) layer to address concerns related to gas fees.

DAS enables light nodes to verify data availability without the need to download the entire block. This efficiency in data verification contributes to reduced computational demands, leading to potential gas fee reductions for transactions involving data availability checks.

By integrating Celestia's DA layer, Ancient8 Chain not only gains scalability benefits but also explores avenues to enhance cost efficiency through optimized gas fee management. This collaborative approach aligns with Ancient8 Chain's commitment to leveraging cutting-edge solutions for a seamless and economically efficient blockchain gaming experience.