The Celestia invasion war has begun, will Ethereum be the biggest winner?
Original author: Haotian (@tmel0211)
Editors note: Recently, TIA prices have been soaring, reaching record highs. Celestia’s threat to Ethereum seems to be approaching quietly. Will Celestia really be the killer of Ethereum? What will be the outcome of the invasion war? Crypto analyst Haotian (@tme l0 211) published his interpretation of Celestia’s invasion of Ethereum on
How to understand @CelestiaOrg’s threat to Ethereum? Is it really an Ethereum killer? in my opinion,Celestias invasion war will continue in the layer 2 realm, but the result of this war will not be death or death, but a win-win situation.
In essence, this is the inevitable result of the high degree of modularity of the layer 2 market. Why? Next, let me tell you my opinion.
We disassemble the Ethereum blockchain system, and there are two cores:
1) Data Avaliability, data availability; 2) interoperability, interoperability.As for the other EVM execution layers and POS consensus layer, although they are also important, when talking about Rollup layer 2, we pay more attention to DA and interoperability.
DA corresponds to the verification capability of Ethereums Validators. If Ethereum participates in DA, the state transition process submitted by layer 2, the main network Validators have the ability to perform verification to ensure security. If Ethereum DA is stripped away, the main network calldata and The Blob block has become the status transition bulletin board of layer 2, and its validity is determined by the third-party DA consensus. Even if a premeditated bad debt is submitted to the main network, the main network cannot make judgments and intervene.
Interoperability corresponds to the communication and interaction capabilities of Ethereum and other chains, mainly involving the security of asset settlement communication between chains, and effective solutions for common liquidity. Currently there are mainly Restaking projects such as @eigenlayer and some middle layer projects for liquidity management.
In addition to stabilizing the status of Ethereums asset settlement layer, this type of liquidity management solution can not only release Ethereums overloaded consensus to a multi-chain environment, but crucially, it can also export the security consensus capabilities of Ethereum Validators to other chains. Open up a new territory for the Ethereum DeFi brand foundation.
Celestia is one of the originators of modular public chains. It stands to reason that it should take Cosmos IBC-related public chains as its main target. After all, most chains based on Cosmos IBC focus on lightweighting, and the DA layer is built on Celestia, which is a perfect fit.
However, Celestia did not take the usual path and launched Blobstream for the Ethereum ecosystem. As an external trouble, it continued to penetrate into Ethereum, combined with the internal trouble caused by the one-click chain issuance caused by the Ethereum layer 2 OP Stack. With this, Celestia Almost conquering the city and continuously invading the territory of Ethereum layer 2.
As a layer 2 developer, what lies ahead is nothing more than the tradeoff of DA legitimacy and chain cost.
DA legitimacy is relatively passive in the commercial market. It is suitable for some comprehensive layer 2 projects that are more concerned about security consensus issues and have a certain brand heritage and market foundation. Some new and small layer 2 projects, especially those based on OP Stack, can quickly launch a chain with one click. The layer 2 chain will try its best to squeeze the cost to the minimum.
Therefore, third-party DAs such as Celesitia are naturally a better choice. Although EigenDA also provides Ethereum DA service issues, it cannot reduce the actual cost of developing layer 2 for the project side.
For developers who choose to take shortcuts to operate and maintain layer 2, cost will inevitably be the first consideration. The largest cost of layer 2 is the DA cost of Ethereum.Choosing a low-cost third-party DA to offset the market revenue pressure of early operations may be the preferred choice of most small developers at the tail end.
Therefore, the key to whether Celestia will threaten Ethereum lies in the future development situation of Ethereum layer 2. If layer 2 will gradually narrow to a comprehensive layer 2 headed by the Four Heavenly Kings, then DA legitimacy will be the main theme. If layer 2 will spring up with various layer 2 solutions, then cost considerations will always be the last word.
Although there is still a variable of Cancun upgrade, the trend of Ethereum layer 2 is already obvious. There will definitely be a large number of layer 2 solutions emerging. The reasons are not difficult to understand:
The development of the four kings such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Starkent, and zkSync is not as expected.Sequencer decentralization problem, 7-day challenge failure to implement, Prover system hardware acceleration problem, EVM competiable equivalence problem, asset cross-chain escape hatch problem, Token economic model cannot empower governance token problem, native DeFi development difficulty problem, etc. wait.
It is no exaggeration to say that the development of layer 2 has left a lot of problems. Any problem that is raised and matched with the Stack framework and Celestia DA may become a powerful development direction with capital narrative imagination space.
I also said in my previous article that the chaos in layer 2 will really begin after Cancun is upgraded, and the layer 2 market will move towards diversification and prosperity.Moreover, OP Stack and ZK Stack are still building a more open and inclusive layer 3 application chain era.By then, the traditional Ethereum layer 2 framework will be even more blurred, and third-party DAs such as Celestia will become a modular DA layer and become a necessity.
This is the inevitable trend of commercial expansion of the layer 2 track, and it is also the fundamental reason for Celestia’s “relentless evil intentions” towards the Ethereum layer 2 ecology.
However, this is not just a threat to Ethereum. When more and more layer 2 adopt third-party DA solutions such as Celestia, Celestia’s market position will be highlighted, and it will also promote changes in Ethereum layer 2:
1) The comprehensive layer 2 platform will become the foundation, and liquidity, user volume, application ecology, etc. will occupy the commanding heights of the brand, and DA legitimacy will become the core difference to ensure their solid position;
2) The personalized cutting-edge layer 2 platform will become scalable, innovative, diverse gameplay, market expected opportunities, etc. will attract groups of people to explore and explore for gold. Flexibility and freedom are their trump cards.
Based on this idea, the core layer 2 of Ethereum will become increasingly stable, and the position of Ethereum DA will not be shaken. However, for some more flexible layer 2 or layer 3, although DA is not in Ethereum, don’t forget, as long as they are based on Stack The stack is built on Ethereum, and Interoperablitys control is difficult to escape.
By then, Ethereum, as the asset settlement layer and source of liquidity, will form softer liquidity control for these flexible layer 2.
If you don’t understand what I mean, just look at how few transactions are running on Celestia, whose price has been sky-high. While Celestia is invading Ethereum, it will gradually lose its “comprehensive chain” attribute. (It was not originally), but became a modular DA layer of the Ethereum ecosystem. So what if so many Ethereum layer 2s adopt Celestias DA? As long as the frameworks of Stack and Rollup remain unchanged, these layer 2s will have to continue to pay taxes to Ethereum.
Compared with the loss of DA legitimacy and the rise of diverse and prosperous layer 2 and layer 3 markets, Ethereum will always be the biggest beneficiary.
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