Mustafa Al-Bassam, co-founder and CEO of Celestia Labs, and COO Nick White join to unveil the vision behind Celestia, a revolutionary data availability layer for blockchains. They discuss the concept of '10,000 roll-ups' and how modular blockchains enhance scalability, especially for gaming and NFTs. Mustafa explains data availability sampling and its crucial role in ensuring reliable data for validators. The duo also explores the potential for Celestia to serve as a data layer for Bitcoin, comparing its architecture with Solana, highlighting a new era in decentralized applications.
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insights INSIGHT
LazyLedger's Origins
Mustafa Al-Bassam's LazyLedger project, now Celestia, originated from his PhD research on blockchain scaling.
He aimed to create the simplest useful blockchain, focusing on consensus and data availability, unlike monolithic blockchains.
insights INSIGHT
Modular Blockchain Vision
Modular blockchains separate core functions (consensus, data availability, execution) into distinct protocols.
This decoupling allows for specialization and scalability, enabling diverse execution environments like EVM, SVM, or custom solutions.
question_answer ANECDOTE
10,000 Rollups Analogy
Nick White envisions a future with 10,000+ rollups, analogous to the evolution of Web2 from single servers to cloud VMs.
This allows developers to customize blockchains without maintaining their own proof-of-stake network.
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Celestia, a data availability layer for blockchains, was launched last October to much fanfare. The platform takes a modular approach to blockchains, allowing developers to post data onto it without the need for smart contracts or execution. This makes it extremely useful for scaling roll-ups and other layer two technologies.
Celestia co-founder Mustafa Al-Bassam and COO Nick White join Unchained to discuss what Celestia is and how it works, how data availability sampling allows for more scalability, how Celestia compares with other data availability layers, whether Celestia could become a data availability layer for Bitcoin, and comparisons between Celestia and Solana.
Show highlights:
Mustafa’s background and how his project called Lazy Ledger ended up becoming Celestia
Nick’s vision for modular blockchains
Why Mustafa believes in the “10,000 roll-up” endgame
Why Mustafa thinks that gaming and NFT chains work better on a modular blockchain
What Celestia is and how it resembles the publication of an article in a newspaper
What data availability sampling (DAS) is and how it works to ensure that the data is available and accurate for validators
How DAS allows for more scalability
What types of applications can be built with this type of modular architecture
Mustafa’s explanation of the concept of Blob stream and blob space
How a roll-up can be an independent or sovereign layer, not just a layer 2 to a layer 1
How Celestia competes with other DA layers, like the future EigenDA
The role of the TIA token in the Celestia ecosystem
How Mufasa hacked the CIA when he was 16 years old and how he transitioned into crypto
Whether Celestia could become a DA layer for Bitcoin layer 2 roll-ups
Whether Solana could end up becoming an Ethereum layer 2 using Celestia for data availability
The proposal to extend the functionality of Celestia without smart contracts in the base layer
Unchained