Trust-Minimizing Values of the Celestia Network
Mustafa Al-Bassam, co-founder of Celestia, recently shared the five core values that govern the social layer of the Celestia network. These principles aim to enhance trust-minimization within the Celestia blockchain community and promote consensus on protocol amendments.
Off-Chain Governance Over Token-Holder Governance
Celestia believes that off-chain governance is superior to token-holder governance. This approach rejects centralized authority and instead emphasizes rough consensus and running code. The social and ecosystem layers of Celestia’s blockchain govern the canonical fork and state transition function, rather than relying on token voting or validators.
User-Centric Approach and Trust-Minimized Light Nodes
Celestia prioritizes its users by eliminating the need for trust in centralized endpoints or committees. Instead, the community focuses on developing trust-minimized light nodes that allow users to independently verify the integrity of the chain using data availability sampling techniques.
Modularism Over Maximalism
Celestia’s community advocates for modularism rather than maximalism in the crypto ecosystem. The base layer of Celestia serves as a generalized data availability layer, remaining neutral towards all execution environments and applications built on top of it. This approach encourages experimentation without favoring any specific execution environment.
Economic Sustainability and High-Grade Blockspace
Celestia aims to achieve economic sustainability by providing high-grade blockspace at scale. Rather than creating artificial resource scarcity, Celestia targets a user base in billions. The pricing of resources is designed to ensure sustainability without excessive extraction.
Overhead-Reduced Blockchain with Minimal On-Chain State
Celestia’s design decision includes minimizing on-chain state to optimize data availability and reduce overhead. Currently, there is no on-chain smart contract environment, but anticipated network enhancements will allow rollups to validate Celestia’s canonical chain without unrelated smart contract verifications. This approach reduces state bloat for both rollups and Celestia.
Hot Take: Fostering Trust-Minimized Blockchain Ecosystems
The elucidation of these values not only reflects the guiding principles of Celestia but also creates an environment conducive to user-centric and trust-minimized blockchain ecosystems. By prioritizing off-chain governance, user trust, and economic sustainability, Celestia aims to foster a community-driven and resilient blockchain network.
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