CELESTIA POSTSCRIPT: Rarely are blockchain projects alone in the pursuit of hot new ideas. That’s true of the au courant rush by various efforts to provide “modular” solutions for handling the various tasks of a blockchain, including the job of “data availability,” which involves managing growing reams of data and efficiently providing it to users or applications when requested. The data-availability network Celestia dominated the headlines last week, especially with the buzzy airdrop of TIA tokens garnering interest from crypto traders. This week, a rival project, Avail, announced a new incentive program on a test network to encourage early adopters to “battle-test our code base.” And Near Foundation, hosting an annual conference this week in Lisbon for the layer-1 blockchain NEAR Protocol, announced its own plans to offer a data-availability network for the Ethereum ecosystem. Despite the interest from solutions providers, early usage of Celestia appears to be modest so far. Galaxy Research’s Christine Kim wrote in a newsletter on Nov. 3: “Now that Celestia has launched, the true value of the protocol will come from the rollup ecosystem that is created over the next few months and years on top of Celestia. The adoption of the rollups built on top of Celestia will dictate the revenue and long-term success of the protocol, and ultimately, prove (or disprove) the blockchain modularity thesis. “
