Towards the latter half of October 2023, Celestia mainnet went live. Over the past year and a half, Celestia has attracted dozens of rollups which have posted more than 1,300 GB of blob data, and Celestia growth metrics are pointing up-and-to-the-right. From the start, Celestia envisioned a modular approach to blockchain architecture by separating consensus from execution. This framework has influenced the broader crypto space and even helped steer today’s L2-centric roadmap on Ethereum.

Below, you’ll see how Celestia evolved over the past year, learn about its protocol upgrades, and get a glimpse of upcoming developments

In Q3 2024, Celestia launched its first major mainnet upgrade titled Lemongrass. This upgrade included several Celestia Improvement Proposals (CIPs):

• CIP-6: Introduced a mechanism to enforce a minimum gas price for transactions, reducing spam and promoting network efficiency by ensuring adequate cost accounting for network usage.

• CIP-9: Enabled IBC multi-hop functionality, allowing direct asset transfers between chains without routing through Celestia, minimizing latency and overhead for cross-chain transactions.

• CIP-10: Established an in-protocol signaling mechanism for validators to coordinate hard fork upgrades, achieving faster and smoother network migrations with reduced downtime.

• CIP-14: Introduced ICS-27-based Interchain Accounts, allowing Celestia accounts to be managed by external IBC-enabled chains, enhancing interoperability within the Cosmos ecosystem.

• CIP-20: Deprecated the Blobstream module in favor of zk-light clients like Blobstream X and Blobstream Zero, simplifying network architecture and optimizing performance for Layer 2s using Celestia’s data availability.

Another large upgrade came with Shwap. In short, Shwap boosted performance and efficiency of the DA network by making DA sampling 12x faster and reducing storage requirements by 16.5x, enabling larger blocks and smaller nodes - something we as node operators definitely appreciate.

This upgrade brought Celestia closer to its goal of 1-gigabyte block sizes (CIP-19) while supporting high-throughput decentralized applications and paving the way for verifiable web apps.

Shwap advanced the roadmap toward 1GB blocks (CIP-19) and introduced a flexible storage design that works with Bitswap and ShrEx to reduce sync times. Full nodes on Mocha dropped from a 7-day sync to about 8 hours. Light nodes now sample data 12x faster, again cutting sync times from 24 hours to 2 hours and lowering storage needs by 2.66x. These improvements moved Celestia closer to high-volume block production for modular blockchains and verifiable applications.

Approximately one month after the Shwap upgrade, Celestia implemented its second consensus upgrade, Ginger. The most significant impact of the Ginger upgrade was 'The Doubling,' which immediately increased Celestia's data availability throughput by 2x. This enhancement was achieved by reducing block times from 12 seconds to 6 seconds, consequently improving the user experience with faster transaction finality times in a single slot.

Additionally, the following CIPs went live:

• CIP-21: Introduced "authored blobs" that include the signer's address in blob metadata, allowing rollups to directly verify authenticity without separately processing PayForBlobs transactions.

• CIP-24: Made gas scheduler variables modifiable only through network upgrades instead of on-chain governance, creating more stable and predictable transaction costs.

• CIP-26: Reduced block time from 12 to 6 seconds to increase network throughput and decrease transaction finality time.

• CIP-27: Implemented soft limits of 600 PayForBlobs (PFBs) and 200 non-PFB messages per block to prevent long block processing times.

• CIP-28: Set a 2MiB size limit on individual transactions to prevent issues with gossiping large transactions and enable future throughput improvements.

Blob usage has been up-only over the past year, as dozens of rollups have been posting data to Celestia. Some quick key points:

• Daily Blob Count: 740 → 200,000+

• Daily MB Posted: 35 MB → 20,000+

• Daily Fees Paid: 4 TIA → 500+ TIA

• Total Data Posted: 1,295 GB

• Total Fees Paid: 307,000 TIA

• Total Blob Count: ~45M

Additionally, Celestia continues to dominate the blob market with over 90% of total data posted. While Ethereum's proto-danksharding introduced blobs as a means to scale data availability rollups, these blobs are primarily connected to the actual transaction information that exists within Ethereum's main network where smart contracts run and transactions are processed.

In contrast, Celestia’s approach allows arbitrary data without linking it to on-chain execution. This flexibility not only supports modular blockchains and sovereign rollups but also positions Celestia as a scalable, execution-agnostic DA layer, enabling broader use cases beyond what is currently feasible within Ethereum’s architecture.

Since Celestia’s inception, a total of 26 new rollups have adopted Celestia for data availability, taking advantage of its high throughput and low fees. At the forefront are Eclipse, Lightlink, and B3, leading in total data posted. Eclipse dominates with 1 TiB of data (93.48% of all blobs), followed by Lightlink with 42.87 GiB and B3 with 37.23 GiB. However, Celestia supports a diverse ecosystem of rollups, including financial, gaming, NFT trading, and social sectors.

What’s next?

Celestia’s next step is integrating zero-knowledge verification into its base layer, introducing a concept called Lazybridging. Lazybridging aims to create a frictionless modular user experience by allowing end-users to interact with assets across multiple rollups and blockchains with the simplicity of a single-chain experience.

For developers, Lazybridging offers immediate access to liquidity and assets both within and beyond the Celestia ecosystem, thanks to native IBC support. This eliminates the need for third-party multisigs and simplifies cross-chain connectivity, including to non-IBC networks like Ethereum through light clients and ZK contracts. Meanwhile, Celestia’s minimalist approach to its base layer, focusing solely on data availability and proof verification, avoids state bloat and maintains high performance.

New rollups will continue to emerge as projects seek to internalize fees, achieve greater architectural customization, enhance scalability, and experiment with novel incentive mechanisms. The future is modular, with thousands of potential natively interoperable rollups designed for unique purposes. Already, networks like Initia, Abstract, Movement, and many others have announced plans to leverage Celestia for DA, drawn by its ability to provide high throughput, low fees, and unparalleled flexibility.

Celestia has shown remarkable growth since its mainnet launch, processing over 1,300 GB of blob data and capturing more than 90% of the data availability blob market through a combination of real-world adoption and core upgrades like Lemongrass, Shwap, and Ginger. This modular approach has attracted dozens of rollups across various sectors, allowing for cheap, quick, and secure DA settlement. Additionally, upcoming innovations like Lazybridging aim to allow for seamless cross-chain experiences and continued adoption from new rollups seeking customization and scalability. As the modular march continues, Celestia stands at the forefront of this paradigm shift, providing the foundation for thousands of potential natively interoperable, purpose-built, and interconnected networks.