Medici Level Up with Nick White, COO of Celestia

In this episode of Level Up, David and Sean are joined by Nick White, COO and founding team member of Celestia. Nick shares how Celestia is building a modular blockchain architecture that separates execution, settlement, and data availability to scale Web3 applications. The discussion explores Celestia’s growth strategy, competitive positioning, and the evolving data availability landscape – including insights on throughput, token economics, revenue, and adoption trends.   

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Key Points From This Episode: 

[00:00:00] Intro 

[00:01:25] Introduction to Celestia and its market position 

[00:02:19] Monolithic vs. modular blockchain architecture 

[00:05:19] Ethereum fee evolution and Celestia’s comparative model 

[00:07:51] Revenue sources and early usage metrics for Celestia 

[00:09:22] Supply-side challenges and unlock schedule implications 

[00:11:28] Market comps and the state of data availability competitors 

[00:14:10] Investment thesis for data availability expansion 

[00:16:04] Introduction to Nick White and his background 

[00:18:32] The modular thesis and architectural vision 

[00:20:55] Celestia as AWS for blockchains 

[00:23:40] Transaction flow in Celestia vs. traditional blockchains 

[00:27:21] Landscape of DA providers and Celestia’s position 

[00:31:33] Use cases where Celestia outperforms Ethereum 

[00:35:19] Celestia’s pricing strategy and block space cost structure 

[00:39:24] Key performance indicators and growth tracking 

[00:43:44] Current customers and usage pipeline 

[00:47:42] Revenue potential at 1 million TPS 

[00:50:04] Tokenomics: TIA’s role in staking and future fee capture 

[00:54:38] Addressing the DA-as-commodity argument 

[01:02:37] Timeline and governance for future pricing power 

[01:06:59] Celestia Labs and Foundation roles 

[01:07:53] Institutional backers and unlock schedule 

[01:12:41] Validator incentives under new inflation models 

[01:14:04] Risks and adoption catalysts moving forward 

[01:18:56] Final reflections on Celestia’s vision and crypto’s future 

Links:  

The Medici Network: https://www.medici.network/   

Podcast Site: https://levelup.medici.network/   

Interested in being a Guest? Connect with Elmira on X: https://x.com/elmira_yilham   

Co-Hosts  

David Grider, Finality Capital: https://x.com/David_Grid  

Sean Farrell, Fundstrat Global Advisors: https://x.com/SeanMFarrell  

Guests  

Nick White, Celestia: 

X: https://x.com/nickwh8te 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickwh8te 

Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant  - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/