Celestia in the Spotlight

Onchain data is most useful for tracking activity or financial metrics and spotting early trends. The Celestia data spotlights meaningful usage from just three applications, only one of which is a known blockchain. With 0.1% of data capacity being used, the network only generates around $75 in transaction fees. 

The current data is most valuable when used to model Celestia’s future growth. If Celestia hits its 46,080 MB daily data capacity for an entire year at a $15 TIA price, the network will generate around $4.7M in annual fees. In this scenario, users posting DA would be forced into a bidding war for inclusion, so fees increase as a function of user price tolerance. However, the fees may still not be enough for fundamental investors to justify the current $15B fully diluted valuation. 

We expect to see Celestia’s data capacity increase as the network grows, but the amount of demand, to publish data, as measured in MB, remains a known unknown. Celestia can scale, but are there enough rollups with PMF that need a performant DA layer?

While Celestia data usage, user count, and fees are small today, the qualitative analysis tells a different story. The modular thesis has been heavily discussed for months, if not years, and Celestia plays a core role in that vision. Since it was one of the first modular-focused chains to market, has a strong team, and has a liquid token (TIA, a staking, governance, and gas/fee payment token), there is no surprise it has commanded attention with strong price action. As modular infrastructure, demand for Celestia comes from other chains rather than individuals. While Manta is the largest rollup live today, there is an impressive list of integrations. Celestia serves as a potential DA layer for:

• RaaS providers like Astria, Dymension, Conduit, and Caldera
• Popular Ethereum-settled frameworks like Arbitrum Orbit, the OP Stack, and the Polygon CDK
• Sovereign rollups built with Rollkit or the Sovereign SDK