There’s a lot of FOMO building around the Celestia ($TIA) token and this has been reflecting in the token’s price. Celestia’s mainnet launched on October 31, 2023. The token launched around $2.60, and as of this article (January 9, 2024), the token price has soared to $15.07, marking a growth of 528% within just two months.

Why all this buzz? What is the reason behind this insane price appreciation? Let’s try to dissect.

What is Celestia Network?

Celestia claims to be the first ever modular data availability network in crypto space. This might sound like a string of technical words. So, we can break it down.

There are two main types of blockchains as of now–monolithic and modular. Monolithic blockchains are the traditional chains such as Ethereum, Solana, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and etc. These handle transaction execution, settlement, and consensus in one blockchain space (usually called a ‘layer’). So, when a blockchain gets busy, its transaction costs spike up and the chain throughput slows down. This is not the setup we want to build the future financial systems on.

On the other hand, modular blockchains attempt to separate the functions of execution, settlement, and consensus to different layers that can operate independently. What this enables is faster and cheaper transactions. This is something we can consider to build the future of finance on.

Celestia takes this concept one step further to bring Data Availability layer (DA). This is technical roadblock in cryptocurrency as to how a blockchain can verify that all the data it was meant to have, have been posted in the consensus layer; i.e. the accuracy of the data being posted. Celestia introduces something called data availability sampling (DAS) and Namespaced Merkle trees (NMTs) to solve this issue. Now it gets too technical to break this down. Anyone interested can read the official docs by Celestia to further understand this.

In a nutshell, Celestia has given a novel solution to one of the biggest problems in blockchain scaling and speed.

And we have seen a lot of adoption of Celestia’s data availability layer from various blockchains out there to significantly reduce their expenses of data validation.

Below image shows over a $500,000 saving on data availability costs after Manta Network integrated the DA layer from Celestia, in less than a month.

This is a real-world example of benefits of Celestia’s adoption. Every day, we hear a new project adopting Celestia’s tech. This will only grow in 2024 and years to come.

Some projects using/or confirmed to use Celestia’s tech;

• MANTA Network ($MANTA)
• SAGA Protocol ($SAGA)
• Dymension ($DYM)
• LightLink Chain ($LL)
• Lyra
• Movement Labs ($MOV)
• Caldera
• Hyperlane
• Polyhedra

Explore all the projects in the Celestia ecosystem here.

So why all the hype around Celestia ($TIA)?

Celestia brings ground-breaking technological advancement to blockchains that was in much need. Hence, many blockchains have started adopting Celestia technology. Naturally, this accrues value to $TIA token.

A lot of these projects have distributed free tokens (airdrops) to $TIA stakers as an incentive for being a crucial part of the ecosystem. $TIA is the native token of Celestia Network. Staking $TIA ensures the Celestia blockchain stays secure and also grants voting rights to stakers.

Airdrops are one of the easiest ways to make money in and out of crypto. Users can stake a token and receive other free tokens as rewards.

Dymension is a modular blockchain that launched recently providing roll-ups as a service. Roll-ups are independent chains that contain applications and games for users. The settlement and consensus happens at the Dymension Hub. Dymension announced that they will airdrop $DYM tokens to $TIA stakers for Celestia’s leadership in modular technology.

Manta Network is another modular-EVM blockchain that utilizes Celestia’s DA, and for this they announced an airdrop of $MANTA tokens for $TIA stakers.

SAGA is a Cosmos layer 1 chain that allows developers to easily launch an independent chain to run applications. These chains will perform the executions and the Saga mainnet will handle the settlement and consensus. SAGA has hinted an airdrop of $SAGA tokens to $TIA stakers as well.

Other known airdrops for $TIA stakers so far are;

• LightLink Chain ($LL)
• Lyra Finance ($LYRA)
• Movement Labs ($MOV)
• Caldera
• Hyperlane
• Hypr Network ($HYPR)

And this is just the start. As more and more applications and chains start adopting Celestia tech we will be able to see more airdrops for $TIA stakers. Even more so, most of these modular chains that airdrop to $TIA stakers will have their own 100+ chains and applications building on them. If you choose to stake these airdrops, you will likely receive more airdrops from those applications and chains. It’s truly an airdrop-ception in 2024.

Alright, let’s talk about how to buy and stake $TIA tokens.

How to Buy $TIA Tokens

$TIA tokens can be purchased on several centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges. If you have money on centralized exchanges such as Binance, MEXC, BitMart, Kraken, KuCoin, Coinbase, Gate.io, ByBit, and DigiFinex, you can purchase $TIA tokens with $USDT, $USDC, and other trading pairs available on each exchange. Mind you this is not an exhaustive list, there maybe other exchanges and other trading pairs.

If you are a fan of decentralized exchanges and have money held on them, you can find trading pairs such as $TIA/$USDT, $TIA/$USDC, $TIA/$ATOM, $TIA/$OSMO and more on Osmosis.

How to Stake $TIA Tokens

If you are buying $TIA on a centralized exchange and you don’t have a Keplr wallet, it’s time to get one.

IMPORTANT: Many centralized exchanges offer $TIA staking on their platforms as well. If you are on the look out for airdrops, DO NO stake on centralized exchanges. These are naturally disqualified from airdrops. So you have to take the decentralized route to enjoy airdrops.

How to setup a Keplr wallet

1. Go to https://www.keplr.app/download and download and install it on your preferred web browser
2. Open the Keplr extension and setup the wallet (write down your seedphrase and password somewhere secure)

Click on ‘Copy Address’ and type ‘Celestia’ in the search bar, now you should see your Celestia address and copy it from the icon highlighted.

If you don’t see a Celestia address, you will need to add it to Keplr.

1. Go to https://docs.celestia.org/developers/keplr
2. Scroll down until you see ‘Add/Switch to Celestia’
3. Approve the popup on Keplr wallet

Now you should be able to copy the Celestia address.

Note: In Keplr wallet (unlike MetaMask), each chain has it’s own address, usually starting with the chain’s name.

Now, in your centralized exchange wallet, send $TIA tokens you purchased to the Celestia address you copied above.

Viola! In a couple of minutes you should have your $TIA tokens in the Keplr wallet.

How to stake $TIA Tokens

You can begin your $TIA staking journey within the Keplr wallet itself.

(1) Click on the Keplr browser extension
(2) Click on ‘Manage Portfolio in Keplr Dashboard’ this will take you to the dashboard to manage your staking, vote on proposals, and view NFTs you have across the entire Cosmos Ecosystem.

(3) Head over to ‘Staking’ tab
(4) You should see Celestia staking at the very top with the available tokens
(5) Select a validator to stake your tokens with;
– Do not select an exchange validator such as Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, etc.
– Do not select a validator with 100% commission rate or 0% commission rate.
– Do your best to select a validator out of the top 20 ranking
(6) Click on the validator name, click on ‘Stake’
(7) Enter the number of $TIA to stake (leave out some $TIA in your wallet to pay for transaction fees–0.2 $TIA should be fine)
(8) Click ‘Stake’ and approve the transaction in your Keplr wallet popup
(9) Done

Staking your $TIA tokens ends here. But we can take it one further step for maximum efficiency of yield optimization.

How to Automatically Compound Your $TIA Staking Rewards

Once you begin staking $TIA tokens, you will receive staking rewards in $TIA as per the pre-defined staking rewards emissions rate. As of this article, the staking rewards APR stood at 16.1%.

You can manually monitor your staking rewards, harvest them, and re-invest to grow your $TIA bag exponentially. But this needs your time and gas feed every time you do this.

We can automate this process through a Cosmos application called Restake.app

(1) Go to https://restake.app/celestia
(2) Connect your Keplr wallet at the top right corner
(3) You should see you selected validator under ‘My Delegations’ tab

(4) Under the REStake header, you should see a grey color switch (in the picture above, it’s green as restake is turned on for me)
(5) Click on the little switch
(6) This would prompt a Keplr transaction that requires your authorization to harvest and re-invest staking rewards for your $TIA stake for a FULL YEAR. Transaction costs are paid by the validators. You can cancel the restake at any time.

Done!

You will see your staked $TIA balance grow daily with this strategy and compounding is the fastest way to grow your $TIA stake and be eligible for even more airdrops.

I hope you found this guide helpful. If you do encounter any issues, do leave a comment below.

Happy staking and happy airdrop farming.

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Disclosure: Cryptocurrency and all its related components are inherently risky and unregulated. There is a very likely possibility that all your investments go to zero. Exercise caution when investing, do your due diligence, and only invest what you can afford to lose completely.