A quick look at Celestia token economics and airdrop details

7,579 developers and over 570,000 on-chain addresses are eligible for airdrops, and the airdrop targets include developers, ecological project contributors, ordinary users, pledgers, etc.

Source: Celestia

Edited by: Karen, Foresight News

Today, the modular blockchain Celestia announced that it will release its native token TIA and launch the Genesis Drop. The genesis airdrop targets 7,579 developers and 576,653 on-chain addresses on Ethereum Rollups, Cosmos Hub and Osmosis. The airdrops are distributed among developers, ecological project contributors, ordinary users, stakers, etc.

Celestia is a proof-of-stake blockchain based on CometBFT and the Cosmos SDK. Celestia supports in-protocol delegation and will start with an initial validator set of 100. Staking TIA as a validator or delegator will be able to receive staking rewards from the network. Validators can also charge delegators a fee in exchange for a percentage of the staking rewards.

What is the utility of Celestia’s native token TIA? What are the token economics and release rules? What are the airdrop criteria?

What is the use of TIA?

First, TIA is an important component for developers to build a modular data availability network. In order to achieve data availability (DA) using Celestia, Rollup developers submit PayForBlobs (PFB) transactions on the network and need to pay a certain fee in the form of TIA.

Second, similar to ETH on Ethereum-based Rollups, in addition to paying for data availability, developers can choose to use TIA as a Gas token to quickly launch their chain. In this mode, developers can focus on creating applications or execution layers without having to issue tokens immediately.

Finally, there are the staking and network governance features. As a permissionless network built using the Cosmos SDK, Celestia uses proof of stake to ensure consensus. Like other Cosmos networks, any user can help secure the network by delegating their TIA to a Celestia validator to earn part of the validator's staking rewards. TIA also allows the community to play a key role in the decentralized governance of key parts of Celestia from day one, such as voting on network parameters and managing community pools.

The Celestia Community Pool will receive 2% of all Celestia block rewards starting from network launch. TIA holders can vote to spend TIA from the Community Pool and fund ecosystem initiatives.

TIA Token Economics

The total supply of TIA Genesis is 1 billion, and the specific distribution method is:

• 20% is publicly allocated (7.4% for Genesis airdrop and incentive testnet allocation, 12.6% for future incentive allocation), which is fully unlocked at launch;

• 26.8% is allocated to the Celestia Foundation and core developers for research, development, and ecosystem initiatives (25% unlocked at launch, remaining 75% unlocked from Year 1 to Year 4);

• 15.9% is allocated to early seed investors (33% unlocked in the first year, and the remaining 67% unlocked from year 1 to year 2);

• 19.7% allocated to early investors in Series A and B (33% unlocked in the first year, and the remaining 67% unlocked from Year 1 to Year 2);

• 17.6% allocated to initial core contributors (33% unlocked in year 1, and the remaining 67% unlocked from year 1 to year 3).

The TIA inflation rate starts at 8% per year and decreases by 10% per year until it reaches a long-term issuance rate of 1.5%. The exact annual inflation rate is shown in the figure below.

In terms of token release and supply changes, Celestia's 1 billion TIA supply at genesis will be subject to several different unlocking schedules. All locked or unlocked tokens can be staked, and staking rewards are unlocked once received.

Celestia Genesis Airdrop

The Celestia Genesis Airdrop will be distributed to 7,579 developers and 576,653 on-chain addresses on Ethereum, Rollups, Cosmos Hub, and Osmosis. Airdrop claims will end at 20:00 on October 17, 2023. At the end of the Genesis Airdrop, unclaimed tokens (up to 45 million TIA) will be distributed to developers and accounts that have submitted addresses.

1. Research and Public Products (6 million TIA allocated)

Among them, research and public products are divided into protocol public products and infrastructure (4.6 million tokens) and Eth Research community (1.4 million tokens).

The eligibility criteria for the protocol’s public goods and infrastructure are:

• Contributors to the protocol’s public goods and infrastructure;

• Celestia contributors and dependencies;

• Contributors to EIPs and BIPs.

Celestia will also distribute 1.4 million TIA to members of the Eth Research forum. The specific eligibility criteria are:

• Eth Research forum users who created at least 1 topic or 1 post before July 5, 2023 (excluding Celestia Labs team members and advisors).

2. Early modular ecosystem (14 million coins)

Celestia will distribute 8.35 million TIA to contributors to organizations in the Celestia ecosystem graph, as well as public contributors to organizations participating in Modular Summits 1 and Modular Summits 2, and participants in Cohort 1 of the Celestia Modular Fellows Program (also excluding Celestia Labs team members and advisors).

An additional 5.65 million TIAs will be allocated to Github super contributors with at least 4 commits total across all eligible repositories, with more TIAs allocated to contributors with at least 23 commits total across research and public products and early modular ecosystem standards.

3. Early adopters of Ethereum Rollups (20 million)

Early adopters of Ethereum Rollups will receive 20 million TIA rewards, which will be distributed to the top 50% of active users of the top 10 Ethereum Rollups ranked by TVL on L2Beat, with the snapshot time being January 1, 2023 (Ethereum block 16308181).

Eligible Ethereum Rollups include OP Mainnet, Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova, Starknet, zkSync Lite, dYdX (StarkEx), Immutable (StarkEx), SoRare (StarkEx), Loopring, and Metis Andromeda.

To determine a user’s on-chain activity level, Genesis Drop assigns points for on-chain actions on Ethereum and all eligible Rollups. Specific considerations include interacting with smart contracts and applications, holding ENS names, donating to Gitcoin, gas spent, and recent transactions.

This part of the airdrop objects excludes the Hop Sybil list, Hop's transaction/relay blacklist, the OP airdrop#1Sybil filter, and the Ethereum and Rollup addresses that Trusta Labs has determined to be very likely to be Sybils based on its method of identifying on-chain cluster behavior and asset transfers.

4. Cosmos Hub and Osmosis stakers and IBC relayers (20 million)

Celestia will distribute 18.5 million TIA to Cosmos Hub and Osmosis stakers and delegators (≥ $75), inviting them to join Celestia and participate in securing and managing the network. The snapshot will occur before January 1, 2023, at Cosmos Hub block 13482205 and Osmosis block 7592794.

The distribution metric is evaluated based on the Cosmos/Osmosis scoring methodology adapted from Trusta Labs’ MEDIA scoring framework, measuring criteria including last transaction time, number of IBC transactions, total value of all transactions, account age, gas consumed, etc.

Additionally, Celestia will allocate 1.5 million TIA to IBC relayers, based on addresses that have conducted MsgRecvPacket transactions before January 1, 2023.

Source:

https://docs.celestia.org/learn/paying-for-blobspace/

https://blog.celestia.org/genesis-drop/