What is a data availability layer? 📚 Data availability (DA) layers provide 3 main features for rollups & L2s:

💽 A place to publish transaction data
🗂️ An efficient way to retrieve transaction data
📦 Abundant blobspace that securely scales

Sovereign rollups are a departure from current rollup designs.

What are they? How do they work?

Here are the basics that will get you started 👇 At its core, a sovereign rollup is a blockchain that publishes its transactions to another blockchain (a DA layer) for consensus and data availability.

Today officially marks the beginning of the Blockspace Race, Celestia’s incentivized testnet program 🏁

Validators have now entered into phase 1: liftoff. Some of the phase 1 tasks for validators include:

• Submit a gentx
• Sign the genesis block
• Maintain high uptime

Introducing Rollkit, a modular framework for rollups.

Neutral and independent from Celestia, Rollkit serves as a community-led public good that empowers developers with the freedom to deploy throughout the modular stack and accelerate innovation.
blog.celestia.org/introducing-ro… Deploying a new monolithic chain is hard.

Developers must gather a validator set, bootstrap security from scratch, and maintain network infrastructure.

These represent significant costs, preventing many from launching their own chains and slowing innovation.

Celestia Labs is heading to @EthereumDenver 🏔

We’ll be giving talks at ETHDenver, including other events around shared security, layer 2s, and more!

Here’s what we have lined up 👇 For the ETHDenver main event, we have @Yazanator giving a talk on “Entering the modular playground” 🧱

As for the other events, here’s what we have in store:

Fun fact: Celestia was originally called LazyLedger In 2019, @musalbas proposed a blockchain that should do as little or be as "lazy" as possible, and be optimized for solely ordering and guaranteeing the availability of transaction data

Want to work in the emerging Modular Ecosystem?

@sovereign_labs @EclipseFND @dymensionXYZ @SkipProtocol @0xConstellation @ArgusLabs_

... are all hiring! Come take a look 🧵

celestia.pallet.com/jobs 💫 @sovereign_labs is an open, interconnected rollup ecosystem in need of a Senior Protocol Engineer for Sovereign SDK Modules

celestia.pallet.com/jobs/a504e8e0-…

What is data availability? Data availability answers the question, has this data been published?

Specifically, a node will verify data availability when it receives a new block that is getting added to the chain.

Can Solana VM rollups connect through IBC?

@EclipseFND is working through some unique challenges to get it done 🎯 Some potential solutions for bridging between Solana VM optimistic rollups 🌉

Does modular software make modular blockchains?

Sometimes, but not always. There’s a difference between the two and what they're used for.

Read on for a summary 🧵
celestia.org/learn/modular-… Modular software and modular blockchains share the same idea: a blockchain's core functions can be distinct components.

But each goes about it in different ways.

Today, we introduce the first cohort of Modular Fellows, after receiving over 400 applications worldwide.

blog.celestia.org/meet-cohort-on… 26 individuals and teams were selected, spanning execution layers, rollup infrastructure, DeFi apps, and more. Cohort One is a promising seed in the fast-emerging Celestia ecosystem.

We are excited to be the data availability solution for Eclipse, who just announced funding to build customizable, modular rollups using the Solana VM.

https://twitter.com/EclipseFND/status/1574798763503263748

We believe developers should be free to choose their own execution environments. We intend to support the Solana VM that Eclipse will be using, among many others.

Launching the new Celestia “Mamaki” testnet and introducing the Alpha Data Availability API! 🍵🧵
blog.celestia.org/celestia-testn… Today, we are excited to announce the launch of the new Celestia “Mamaki” testnet! This marks the next step towards mainnet - a modular blockchain network that enables anyone to easily deploy their own blockchain without the overhead of bootstrapping a new consensus network. 🧱

How do modular blockchains bring scalable shared security to the @Cosmos?

CTO @KreuzUQuer took the stage at @Gateway_Conf to explain and outline the modular design 🧵 🧱 @cosmos @KreuzUQuer @Gateway_Conf Right now, there is a problem with current blockchains. The process of 1) checking if a block has consensus then 2) verifying if all the transactions are valid is inefficient. We face a bottleneck.

Rollups have emerged as the dominant choice for execution in the modular paradigm. While they have desirable security properties, in what ways are they scalable? Here’s a brief look 🧵 To recap, a rollup executes transactions and builds blocks which are then published to a different blockchain, which we’ll call our base layer. The base layer will at minimum, provide consensus over the transactions and ensure they are available.

By decoupling consensus from execution, Celestia also removes settlement functionality. What happens to rollups that need settlement, and what are the advantages of a separate settlement layer?

Let’s take a look 🧵 The purpose of removing settlement from Celestia is to reduce the burden of execution and smart contracts, such as state bloat and congestion. However, rollups that want better interoperability or a separate dispute resolution layer need a settlement layer.

Modular blockchains are a new emergent class of blockchains that present viable solutions to many current problems. However, they can be difficult to grasp initially. To help ease confusion, here is an introduction to the core foundations of modular blockchains. 🧵 To recap, a modular blockchain manages a subset of the functions of a monolithic chain. Instead, modular blockchains work together as part of a modular stack. The functions that modular blockchains can consist of are execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability.

To us, blockchains are more than a technological advancement. They are a mechanism that enables individuals to coordinate in a sovereign manner. To guide this vision, here is an overview of the values held by modular blockchains 👇🧵 1. Users are first class citizens of the network

Technologies like fraud/validity proofs and data availability enable users to be first class citizens. They can verify the network with equivalent security to full nodes but with significantly lower hardware.

It is clear that the transition to a multi-chain ecosystem has emerged. The question remains, what will that ecosystem look like in the future?

Here’s the TLDR on our vision 👇 We believe modular blockchains are the natural progression of a multi-chain ecosystem. Instead of blockchains that do everything, the core functions are separated across multiple specialized layers.

Modular blockchains split the processes of a single monolithic blockchain into multiple specialized layers. What exactly are the benefits of taking this approach?

Let’s take a brief look 🧵👇 1. Sovereignty

Execution layers, such as rollups, can harness a modular architecture without sacrificing sovereignty. A sovereign rollup has the ability to push upgrades and fork without permission from any underlying layers, just like an L1.

Welcome to the thread of threads on modular blockchains 🧵

This is an ongoing thread that will help you navigate the upcoming modular paradigm.

Check it out 👇

https://twitter.com/CelestiaOrg/status/1505861806874537991