Katherine Ross

The biggest raise this week came from Celestia. It announced a $100 million round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from 1kx, Syncracy Capital, Placeholder and Robot Ventures.&nbsp;



The $100 million has brought the “project’s total amount raised to $155 million,” per a press statement.&nbsp;



“When Celestia launched last year as the first modular data availability layer, it scaled blockspace from the dial-up era to the broadband era,” <a href="https://blog.celestia.org/celestia-foundation-raise/">said</a> Mustafa Al-Bassam, co-founder of Celestia and chair of the Celestia Foundation.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/data-availability-transaction-costs-blockchain">Celestia, the first modular data availability network, launches on mainnet</a>



“Now, the core developers have introduced the technical roadmap to scale blockspace to the fiber optic era — while keeping it verifiable and low latency.”



A16z made some waves this week as well, announcing its first investment into a decentralized science investment.&nbsp;



The project, AminoChain, announced a $5 million seed round which was — of course — led by Andreessen Horowitz.&nbsp;



“We believe that blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize almost any industry where transparency, security, and ownership are core and presents a tremendous opportunity to accelerate progress in healthcare and science,” said Arianna Simpson, an a16z general partner investing in Web3.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">In 1951, Henrietta Lacks&#39; cells were taken without her knowledge or consent. Her cells, known now as “HeLa” cells, went on to become one of the most important tools in modern medicine, leading to breakthroughs in healthcare from the polio vaccine to cancer treatments. For 72… <a href="https://t.co/01tZme6gLL">pic.twitter.com/01tZme6gLL</a>&mdash; AriannaSimpson.eth (@AriannaSimpson) <a href="https://twitter.com/AriannaSimpson/status/1838935496220688583?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 25, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



According to its funding <a href="https://aminochain.io/resources/details/introducing-aminochain">announcement</a> — which also served as the project coming out of stealth — AminoChain seeks to give patients who donate bio-samples “the transparency to finally know what is happening with their donations to society.”



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/decentralize-science-research-data">We need to decentralize science</a>



The project is a “technology that connects enterprise medical institutions and on which healthcare applications can be built,” AminoChain said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Other notable rounds:&nbsp;</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Polymarket is reportedly mulling the raise of more than $50 million in new capital, per <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/polymarket-discusses-fresh-funding-amid-election-betting-craze">The Information</a>.</li>



<li>Initia <a href="https://x.com/initiaFDN/status/1838929323954200974">announced</a> a $14 million Series A led by Theory Ventures, with participation from Delphi Ventures and HackVC, among others. </li>



<li>Mawari Network <a href="https://x.com/mawariXR/status/1839355480914927853">said</a> it raised over $10 million in strategic funding in a round led by Borderless, 1kx and Antfield. </li>



<li>Daylight <a href="https://x.com/kyle/status/1838615202960453741">announced</a> a $6 million round led by Union Square Ventures and 1kx. Framework Ventures and Chapter One also participated in the round.</li>
</ul>



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a16z

Funding Roundup: Celestia’s raised $155M

Macauley Peterson

Ethereum’s modular scaling roadmap has clear benefits in faster and cheaper transactions, using technology like rollups for execution and dedicated data availability providers.



In practice today, however, this comes at the steep cost of fragmentation in user experience.&nbsp;



This fragmentation is particularly evident on chains that are either too new or too small to have dedicated connections to crypto exchanges or other onramps. Moving funds first to, say, Arbitrum and then to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/layer-2-adopts-celestia-mainnet">Manta Pacific requires the use</a> of a bridge like Rhino.Fi, which aside from additional steps, introduces a requirement to trust a new central counterparty, if only briefly.



The other alternative is to use native bridges back to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> mainnet, which can be slow and costly.



So, while it is now easy to deploy new chains, tapping into the users and liquidity elsewhere — chiefly Ethereum mainnet and other major <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">EVM</a>-chains — remains a source of friction and risk.



But it won’t always be so.



Rollkit, spun out of Celestia <a href="https://blog.celestia.org/introducing-rollkit-a-modular-rollup-framework/">last year</a>, was the first sovereign rollup framework to radically simplify the launch of new chains using Celestia for DA. That’s for a <a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary">category</a> of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollups</a> known as optimiums or validiums — optimistic or validity proof-based rollups that use offchain DA.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/layer-2-secured-by-ethereum">So your layer-2 is ‘secured by Ethereum’ — what does that mean?</a>



However, you can also build a chain directly on Celestia, which presents additional challenges, according to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/axelar">Axelar</a> protocol co-founder and Foundation director Georgios Vlachos.



“If you&#8217;re building directly on Celestia, then it&#8217;s impossible for a user to even onboard from Ethereum,” Vlachos told Blockworks. “Axelar will allow users to move their assets to the chain — a boring use case, but it&#8217;s impossible to use the chain without functionality like this.”



Rollkit is about to get a boost from Axelar’s Interchain Amplifier, which automates token routing across all Axelar-connected chains — more than 60 and growing.



Axelar is not the only solution for cross-chain interoperability, but compared to many bridges, it’s more secure due to its decentralization with a permissionless validator set of 75 operators.



Individual cryptographic private keys are frequently compromised, resulting in millions of dollars in losses, including many incidents involving <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bridges">bridges</a>. In Axelar’s case, “it&#8217;s very hard for an attacker to actually steal funds because they would have to steal a majority of the [75] keys,” Vlachos said.



Its hub-and-spoke architecture is a boon for new chains spun up using Rollkit because they will immediately be connected to all other chains in the network. That’s possible because Axelar is itself a smart contract blockchain with its own virtual machine.



A new chain will typically lack native assets, so accessing <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/liquidity">liquidity</a>, including stablecoins, from elsewhere is critically important.



“Circle doesn&#8217;t launch on a new chain day one,” Vlachos noted. “They have something like 10 chains today, but new rollups will need stablecoins [on] day one.”



USDC is natively issued on 16 chains, but only eight of those have available routes <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-launches-cctp-solana">via its CCTP mint and burn system</a>.



On the asset issuance side, Axelar’s Interchain Amplifier will also support its Interchain Token Service (ITS), a cross-chain application built on top of the Amplifier layer that lets anyone create a cross-chain version of any token connected to Axelar.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/axelar-multichain-tokens">Tokens are going multichain, and it’s getting easier</a>



“As an industry, we need to standardize some of those things,” Vlachos added. “Unfortunately, every chain ends up doing their own thing.”



That shortcoming extends to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/wallets">wallet</a> providers, which have thus far tended to specialize within a certain ecosystem. He points to XDEFI as a multichain wallet example. <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/phantom">Phantom</a>, which started on Solana, is another wallet that has lately been making a push to support other ecosystems.



“Axelar provides the technology to abstract away the chains, but we need the wallet developers to integrate the technology in the long run and make the same wallet available on many different chains,” Vlachos said.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/lido">Lido</a> has made progress in terms of token standardization, working with both Axelar and Wormhole to establish a canonical version of stETH across many chains.



Vlachos is keeping his eye on the prize: a future in which users can focus on applications and assets, not on the backend wizardry facilitating their desired action.



“The idea is that any application that today is siloed on a single chain — be it decentralized exchange, a money market, an NFT marketplace — a developer should be able to build the same user experiences spanning different chains.”



Updated May 21 at 1:20 pm ET: Clarified Georgios Vlachos&#8217; role as both protocol co-founder and Axelar Foundation director, and 3:55 pm ET clarifying that Rollkit is now independent of Celestia.



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Axelar

Celestia-built Rollkit gets an interchain boost

Jack Kubinec

0G Labs has raised $35 million in fresh funding for its development of infrastructure aimed to help AI and other compute-intensive applications run on-chain. The round drew participation from Hack VC, Stanford Builders Fund, Delphi Digital and GSR, among several others.&nbsp;



The platform is hoping to stake its claim as a go-to layer for data availability (DA), joining a field of current and forthcoming DA providers that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arbitrum-ethereum-data-availability">includes the likes of Celestia</a>, EigenLayer, NEAR and Avail. 0G, shorthand for Zero Gravity, hopes to scale by separating data storage from data publishing.



Data availability refers to the ability of nodes in a blockchain network to access and verify transaction data. For optimistic rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism, for example, nodes need to be able to access all the chain’s transactions to run proofs and weed out fraudulent transactions.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/data-availability-transaction-costs-blockchain">Celestia, the first modular data availability network, launches on mainnet</a>



But publishing large amounts of data is expensive: A Blockworks Research report <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/research/the-data-is-available-an-overview-of-data-availability-layers#introduction">estimated</a> that DA costs account for 90% of transaction costs on some <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollups</a>. The cost is exacerbated by the fact that many rollups use Ethereum for DA, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-rollup-data-availability-alternatives">and Ethereum blockspace is expensive</a>.&nbsp;



As a result, startups like 0G have cropped up to provide much cheaper DA layers. These are particularly attractive to high-throughput sectors like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gaming">gaming</a>, on-chain social media or <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/artificial-intelligence">AI</a>.&nbsp;



Michael Heinrich, founder of 0G, told Blockworks that the protocol is working with “a number” of AI projects including ORA and Modulus Labs.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ora-on-chain-oracle-ethereum">ORA’s on-chain AI oracle is now available on Ethereum mainnet</a>



“Their horizontal <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/scaling">scaling</a> approach is different from other players in the space, and it&#8217;s going to be able to hit the throughput you need to support high volume applications [on-chain],” Sam Lehman, principal at 0G Labs investor Symbolic Capital, told Blockworks.



0G is <a href="https://0glabs.gitbook.io/0g-doc">designed</a> with two lanes: one for data publishing and one for data storage.&nbsp;



The platform’s data publishing lane <a href="https://0glabs.gitbook.io/0g-doc/docs/0g-da/architecture">makes</a> use of data availability sampling.&nbsp;



DA sampling involves so-called light nodes in a blockchain network downloading random subsets of data to conclude with high statistical probability that all data has been published correctly. DA layers Celestia and Avail also make use of data availability sampling. Ethereum’s planned upgrade to full danksharding <a href="https://ethereum.org/en/roadmap/danksharding/">will</a> shift the network to start using DA sampling as well.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/data-availability-ethereum">Why data availability sampling matters for blockchain scaling</a>



With the 0G platform, batches of data that are sent to 0G’s storage contract also go through the data publishing lane. In the storage lane, data sent to 0G is erasure coded, meaning some data is duplicated so that block data can always be recovered even if data is lost or withheld. Celestia, Avail and EigenDA either do or plan to use erasure coding for their data availability systems. 



0G then sends chunks of erasure coded data to a decentralized storage system that is secured by paying rewards to data storers. This system is meant to be horizontally scalable, meaning that each node has to download less data as more nodes are added to the system.



In general, DA providers are premised on modularity, which is the idea of breaking complex systems (like blockchains) into smaller, interchangeable parts. DA layers are used by <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/monolithic-modular-blockchain-debate">modular, as opposed to monolithic</a>, blockchain systems.



Before starting 0G, Heinrich previously founded office food service Garten.



Updated March 26, 2024 at 10:23 am ET: Amended to clarify that Avail is a separate entity from Polygon.



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Artificial Intelligence

0G Labs raises $35M for data availability, spurring competition with Celestia, EigenLayer, others

Manta Pacific, a layer-2 network currently running on Optimism’s OP stack, has become the first such chain to adopt modular data availability (DA) using the newly launched Celestia mainnet.



The shift to Celestia for DA, instead of Ethereum mainnet, is expected to make transactions for Manta Pacific cheaper by at least an order of magnitude, according to core contributor Kenny Li, which should “future-proof” the chain even if demand for block space picks up in a future bull market.



Currently, a typical transaction costs around $0.24 on Manta Pacific, but Li anticipates that they can reduce that to less than $0.03 within a week or two, and a 25x savings after further adjustments in January.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/data-availability-transaction-costs-blockchain">Celestia, the first modular data availability network, launches on mainnet</a>



Li, who co-founded p0x Labs, which is developing Manta Network, started talking with the Celestia team in the first quarter of 2023, after learning that Celestia was working on an OP stack integration, which timed out well with Manta’s launch plans.



“By coincidence, we were able to kind of get the stars aligned there — no pun intended,” Li told Blockworks.



Manta Pacific&#8217;s integration with Celestia utilizes data availability sampling (DAS), a mechanism that allows light nodes to verify data availability without downloading all data within a block. This method reduces costs by enabling more efficient data retrieval, effectively turning the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollup</a> into a validium.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/layer-2-secured-by-ethereum">So your layer-2 is ‘secured by Ethereum’ — what does that mean?</a>



The adoption of modular blockchain designs involve a separation of various tasks — such as consensus, execution, data availability and settlement — across different layers, rather than handling all functions within a single chain.



Since the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/manta-network-layer-2">launch of the Manta Pacific testnet</a> in August, the Manta team <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/manta-ditches-op-stack">decided to switch to a zkEVM</a> based on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/polygon">Polygon</a> Chain Development Kit (CDK).



Polygon’s own proof-of-stake chain will also <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polygon-pos-to-validium">migrate to a zkEVM validium rollup</a>.



This transition, which should take place in the second quarter of 2024, will solve the user pain point of delayed withdrawals required by the fault proofs endemic to Optimistic rollups.



“Right now, we&#8217;re looking at, first, phasing it in such that one of our phases would essentially have a multi-prover model whereby we could fall back to the fault proofs on the OP stack if anything went wrong, but also being able to bring in the zk proofs so that we can have that fast finality for the users,” Li said.



Fault proofs on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">Optimism</a> are not yet live, so the integrity of transactions relies on trusting a centralized sequencer and community vigilance.



Manta also relies on one centralized sequencer to post data to Celestia, and Li analogizes the planned zk-prover fallback mechanism to the use of Celestia itself.



“The components we need to think about [are] resiliency, fallback options, contingency plans, and so with Celestia, the contingency here is that the fallback goes back to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>” for data availability, Li explained.



Since DA is the main driver of transaction costs for the user, a multi-prover system should have a negligible effect.



P0x Labs, the team building the Manta Network, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/investment-firms-dominate-week">wrapped up a $25 million Series A</a> funding round in July.



Manta Pacific joins Manta Atlantic, a Polkadot parachain expected to go live in early 2024, to collectively offer a multifaceted option for the development of Web3 applications.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polkadot-rethinks-parachain-auctions">Polkadot rethinks the economics of parachain auctions</a>



Manta Atlantic focuses on zk solutions within the Polkadot ecosystem, but Li said there are synergies between the two coming.



“A lot of the zk components that we built out on the circuit side specifically are focused on on-chain identity, and so one of our goals right now is to bridge that on-chain identity over to the Pacific ecosystem so that people can verify without revealing any of their wallet addresses and stuff,” he said.



That would include roughly 100,000 <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/kyc">KYCd</a> participants, he added.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Native yield on ETH and USDC</h2>



Manta Pacific offers its own spin on the idea pioneered by Mantle and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/3-years-launch-eth-staking">Blast</a> to let users earn yield on their deposited ether and stablecoins while interacting with dapps on the layer-2 network.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ether-liquid-staking-solution-meth">Mantle offers ‘mETH’ to the masses, as a ‘lighter weight Lido’</a>



Manta relies on <a href="https://docs.stakestone.io/stakestone/">StakeStone</a> a Liquid Staking Token (LST) protocol that accepts ETH and issues STONE, a non-rebasing Omnichain Fungible Token (<a href="https://layerzero.gitbook.io/docs/evm-guides/layerzero-omnichain-contracts/oft">OFT</a>) based on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layerzero">LayerZero</a> protocol, which can be used directly in DeFi dapps.



StakeStone supports leading staking pools and is compatible with upcoming restaking, such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a>.



Similarly, USDC deposits are converted to the yield-bearing stablecoin (USDM) issued by <a href="https://mountainprotocol.com/">Mountain Protocol</a>. Manta will eventually enable bridging these tokens back out after an initial phase of about two months as part of a campaign, dubbed New Paradigm.



And that’s exactly how Li sees it.



“Kudos to Blast — they&#8217;ve got like 800 million <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tvl">TVL</a> [total value locked] from people who could otherwise be using those assets in ways that could provide more future value,” Li said, adding that Manta Pacific’s TVL is about $60 million after 3 days.



“I do know that many other [<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-2-2">layer-2s</a>] are also exploring this now as well, and I think while it&#8217;s interesting and novel at this moment, a year from now, I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if it&#8217;s a commodity — the feature that everyone has,” he said.



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Celestia

Manta Pacific adopts Celestia, embraces native Ethereum yield

Bessie Liu

Data availability blockchain Celestia is live on mainnet, making it the first modular data availability network to be publicly available.&nbsp;



Celestia’s mainnet launch will consist of rollups that use the network as its data availability and consensus layer.



The team recently initiated <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celestia-airdrop-oct-17">its airdrop efforts</a>, through which 6% of the tokens total circulating supply was set to be awarded to eligible participants.



Read More: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celestia-airdrop-oct-17">Celestia opens airdrop for planned modular data availability network</a>



Data availability refers to the capability network nodes have to download transaction information, store the information and ensure that participants can access the information to verify or dispute its accuracy.&nbsp;



On layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum, network nodes download the data from each block, preventing invalid transactions from being executed.&nbsp;



What Celestia <a href="https://celestia.explorers.guru/">offers</a> is a data availability layer, which can verify transactions through data availability sampling (DAS) — without the need to download data from an entire block.



Read More: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/data-availability-ethereum">Why data availability sampling matters for blockchain scaling</a>



Using a data availability layer can increase the efficiency of a blockchain, drastically improving transaction speeds and minimizing costs.



In this initial launch, blocks will be between 2MB and 8MB in size and will be upgradeable based on on-chain governance. 8MB of blobspace is estimated to be around 9,000 to 30,000 ERC-20 transactions every second.



The Celestia team plans to increase block sizes to roughly 1GB as part of its roadmap.



“Celestia’s mainnet beta launch marks the arrival of the first live modular data availability network with data availability sampling (DAS) light nodes,” said Ekram Ahmed, spokesperson for the Celestia Foundation.



Celestia’s mainnet launch follows the unveiling of Nexus — a network of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bridges">bridges</a> that enables developers to bootstrap liquidity across various crypto ecosystems.&nbsp;



Nexus was developed by contributors from Neutron, Hyperland and Mitosis using the Inter Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC) and a modular security stack designed by Hyperlane.



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bridges

Celestia, the first modular data availability network, launches on mainnet

Celestia, a modular consensus and data network, said on Tuesday that it will allocate 6% of its native token, TIA, to ecosystem participants and developers in a token airdrop.&nbsp;



Celestia is a blockchain network aiming to create a scalable <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/data-availability-ethereum">data availability</a> layer. Data availability refers to the ability of network nodes to download data from a block, store it, and ensure it is accessible and retrievable by network participants.



On <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>, for example, nodes will download all the available data on the block and store it for a period of time — a process that reduces throughput and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eclipse-blockchain-scalability-trilemma-bell-curve">hinders scalability</a>.



Celestia hopes to find an efficient solution to this problem. Through data availability sampling, the network nodes verify a small number of random chunks of data from each block.



“Data availability sampling is a mechanism for light nodes to verify data availability without having to download all data for a block. This allows Celestia&#8217;s blockspace to scale with the number of users,” Ekram Ahmed, a Celestia Labs spokesperson, told Blockworks.



Ahmed notes that data availability is critical to the security of any blockchain as it ensures that anyone can inspect the ledger of transactions and verify it.&nbsp;



The Celestia network will launch prior to the end of 2023, the company noted in a <a href="https://blog.celestia.org/genesis-drop/">blog post</a>. It is currently on track to be the first modular data availability network to launch with data availability sampling, ahead of its competitors <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eigenlayer-dissolve-into-ethereum">EigenLayer</a> and Avail.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Genesis Drop</h2>



The Genesis Drop will mark the beginning of Celestia’s data availability network and its native asset, TIA.



A total of 7,579 developers and almost 600,000 Ethereum rollup, Cosmos Hub and Osmosis addresses will be eligible to receive TIA starting Sept. 26 and running until Oct. 17, the company noted in a <a href="https://blog.celestia.org/genesis-drop/">blog post</a> announcing the airdrop. 



“Celestia’s Genesis Drop invites a wide range of eligible developers and on-chain addresses to build and contribute to Celestia’s modular ecosystem from inception,” Ahmed said.&nbsp;



Sixty million TIA, roughly 6% of the token’s total circulating supply, will be handed over to eligible recipients. Of the 60 million, 20 million will be split between public goods researchers and contributors, another 20 million will be allocated to early adopters of Ethereum rollups, and the remaining will be given to stakers and IBC relayers of Cosmos Hub and Osmosis.&nbsp;



Celestia has specifically noted that US persons are not allowed to receive the airdrop. VPNs or tools that can bypass geoblocking services are also restricted, and any users who choose to violate these terms will be permanently disqualified.



Members of the Celestia Labs teams and any advisers will also be excluded from the airdrop.



Updated Sept. 26, 2023 at 3:35 pm ET: Updates body and headline to correct the launch and end date of the Celestia airdrops claims process, as well as the number of eligible chain addresses.



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airdrop

Celestia opens airdrop for planned modular data availability network

Casey Wagner

<div id="highlights-block_701d97433c6cee46627c6e551335c8c7" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Celestia has raised $55 million to put toward its modular blockchain network development</li>
 <li>Investors include Bain Capital Crypto, FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Blockchain scaling startup Celestia has raised $55 million in a push to bolster its Web3 development aims.



The round is earmarked for creating a modular blockchain network, Celestia said Wednesday. The round was led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital, and participants include Spartan Group, FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto.&nbsp;



Modular blockchains — opposed to monolithic blockchains — are, in theory, highly scalable and segmented. They are made up of specialized chains, which “are less constrained and break the rigidity of monolithic chains into flexible components, promising greater scale, security, and decentralization,” Celestia wrote in a <a href="https://blog.celestia.org/celestia-raises-55m-to-launch-modular-blockchain-network/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blog</a>.&nbsp;



“Modular blockchains will define the next decade of Web3 innovation,” Mustafa Al-Bassam, a Celestia co-founder, said.



For the past decade, crypto has been dominated by relatively monolithic layer-1 smart contract platforms, which have sacrificed decentralization and security to make room for cheaper transactions, according to Al-Bassam.&nbsp;



“Unlike what is seen in sharding, with Celestia, non-consensus nodes will still enhance throughput and security,” Blockworks research wrote in a report. “The network prioritizes scaling block verification instead of block production.”&nbsp;



Modular blockchain projects Eclipse, Constellation and Dymension already use Celestia for their data availability layer, the company said, one illustration of demand.



“Modular designs are unlocking rapid experimentation across the decentralized application stack,” Alex Evans, a partner at Bain Capital Crypto, said. “By minimizing base-layer complexity, Celestia offers cleaner abstractions for developers and greater sovereignty for communities of users.”



The capital raise comes as venture dollars continue to hold strong — even amid turbulent market conditions. Last month, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/startup-focused-on-no-fraud-crypto-payments-raises-50m/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sardine</a>, a blockchain transaction security company, finalized a $51.5 million venture raise for product development. Also in September, North Island Ventures closed a $125 million fund to back promising crypto and Web3 projects.&nbsp;



Venture funding is likely only just starting to pick up again after the market downturn, though, Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, said during a recent panel discussion in New York. 



“I think venture has been taking cues from public markets lately,” Wood said. “I think when the public market starts turning around, venture funding will turn around furiously. The private markets are pricing innovation more correctly than the public markets are right now.”



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