Initiating Genesis Drop

Celestia’s genesis block, expected later this year, will start the first modular data availability network. With it will arrive TIA, the native asset of Celestia.

Like in other permissionless protocols, TIA enables participation in network consensus and decentralised governance of network parameters and the community pool.

But core to Celestia’s mission is empowering anyone to launch their own blockchain in minutes, simply by paying for blobspace with TIA. This enables rollup developers to tap into the abundant blobspace enabled by Data Availability Sampling (DAS), the first blockchain architecture which scales with the number of users. In the modular era, developers have the freedom to choose whatever asset(s) they want as a gas token or currency of their rollup—or can opt to bootstrap quickly using TIA.

To advance that vision, today we’re initiating the Genesis Drop.

The Genesis Drop invites 7,579 developers and 576,653 onchain addresses on Ethereum rollups, Cosmos Hub, and Osmosis to join Celestia, allowing them to pay for blobspace and secure the network from the first block.

From today until 17 October, 2023, 12:00 UTC, eligible developers and addresses can add their address to the Celestia genesis block by visiting genesis.celestia.org. Tokens claimed via the Genesis Drop will be accessible directly in-wallet from the first block.

Please note: https://genesis.celestia.org is the only way to access the Celestia Genesis Drop. Neither the claiming site, any member of the Celestia Labs team, nor any member of the Celestia Foundation will ever ask you to enter your private key or transfer tokens of any kind from your wallet.

The Genesis Drop allocates 60 million TIA (6% of total supply) across the categories described in the table below. TIA documentation provides further details of Celestia’s token model, supply, and fee market.

Overview of TIA

Paying for blobspace

TIA is an essential part of how developers build on the first modular data availability network. To use Celestia for data availability (DA), rollup developers submit PayForBlobs (PFB) transactions on the network for a fee, denominated in TIA.

Bootstrapping new rollups

A core part of the Celestia vision is that deploying a blockchain should be as easy as deploying a smart contract. In the modular era, developers no longer need to issue a token to launch their own blockchain.

Similarly to ETH on Ethereum-based rollups, developers may opt to bootstrap their chain quickly by using TIA as a gas token and currency, in addition to paying for data availability. In this mode, developers can focus on creating their application or execution layer, instead of having to issue a token right away.

Staking and network governance

As a permissionless network built with Cosmos SDK, Celestia uses proof-of-stake to secure its own consensus. Like in other Cosmos networks, any user can help secure the network by delegating their TIA to a Celestia validator for a portion of the validator’s staking rewards.

Rough consensus will govern Celestia’s decentralised core development roadmap via the Celestia Improvement Proposal (CIP) process, providing offchain governance similar to EIPs in Ethereum or BIPs in Bitcoin. More details on the CIP process will be released in the coming weeks.

TIA also allows the community to play a critical role in decentralised governance over key parts of Celestia from day one, such as voting on network parameters and governing the community pool.

• Network parameters:

  • Starting at network launch, TIA holders can vote on a set of network parameters, including Celestia’s block size, max square size and other parameters outlined here.

• Community pool:

  • Starting at network launch, Celestia’s community pool receives 2% of all Celestia block rewards.
  • TIA holders may vote to spend TIA from the community pool and fund ecosystem initiatives.

Additional details around governing network parameters and the community pool are provided in the Celestia docs.

Genesis Drop

Celestia’s Genesis Drop invites a wide range of eligible developers and onchain addresses to build and contribute to Celestia’s modular ecosystem from inception.

Eligibility for the Genesis Drop falls under four categories, two allocating TIA to 7579 developers and two allocating TIA to 576,653 onchain addresses on Ethereum, rollups, Cosmos Hub, and Osmosis. Developers can be eligible for multiple TIA allocations, (e.g. the sum of Research and public goods, Eth Research, and/or Early modular ecosystem).

The Genesis Drop claiming period will conclude on 17 October 2023, 12:00 UTC.

Any eligible TIA amounts presented at genesis.celestia.org or in this blog post are the minimum amount, based on a scenario in which 100% of eligible GitHub accounts or onchain addresses claim. At the conclusion of the Genesis Drop, a portion of unclaimed tokens, up to 45 million TIA, will be allocated to developers and accounts who have submitted addresses.

Jump to eligibility section:

• Research and public goods
  • Protocol public goods and infrastructure
  • Eth Research
• Early modular ecosystem
• Early adopters of Ethereum rollups
• Stakers and IBC relayers of Cosmos Hub and Osmosis

Research and public goods – 6,000,000 TIA

Protocol public goods and infrastructure – 4,600,000 TIA

Additional TIA is provided to developers with at least 23 total commits and 4 total commits across all eligible repositories, as detailed in the GitHub super-contributors section below.

Eligibility criteria

• Protocol public goods and infrastructure
  • Public GitHub contributors to organisations and key infrastructure repositories of Ethereum, Bitcoin and all chains (rollups, Cosmos Hub, Osmosis) included in the onchain criteria of the Genesis Drop
• Open source governance of Ethereum and Bitcoin
  • Public GitHub contributors to the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) and Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) repositories
• Contributors to Celestia’s core repositories and key dependencies
  • Public GitHub contributors to celestia-core, celestia-node, and celestia-app (excluding Celestia Labs)
  • Members of GitHub organisations and public contributors to key repos of open source blockchain dependencies of Celestia, including Cosmos SDK, CometBFT, IBC, Bitswap and libp2p

Exclusion criteria

• Members of the Celestia Labs team and advisors

Eth Research – 1,400,000 TIA

Celestia’s roots originate from the Ethereum research community, where the ideas around LazyLedger were first formed.

The Genesis Drop allocates 1,400,000 TIA to members of the Eth Research forum who have contributed to open discourse and published groundbreaking research as topics or posts on the forum over six years.

Eligibility criteria

• Users of Eth Research forum who have created at least 1 Topic or 1 Post before July 5, 2023
• Please note:
  • A small number of eligible accounts (those who have posted or created a topic on Eth Research) may be wrongly indicated as ineligible on the claim site.
  • If you believe you are impacted by this issue, confirm your eligibility by verifying your GitHub account in your Eth Research profile bio no later than 15 October 2023, 12:00 UTC, two days before Genesis Drop concludes

Exclusion criteria

• Members of the Celestia Labs team and advisors

Early modular ecosystem – 8,350,000 TIA

The modular ecosystem has grown significantly since the first Modular Summit last year in Amsterdam. Experimentation with novel execution layers and specialised blockchains is on the rise, accompanied by exciting new complementary infrastructure like intent systems and zero-knowledge state proofs.

Public contributors to organisations represented at Modular Summits 1 & 2 are eligible for the Genesis Drop. In the spirit of modularism not maximalism, this not only includes other data availability layers in development, like Avail and EigenDA, but also Solana, whose execution layer innovations are finding their way into rollups.

To build on the first modular data availability network, developers of rollups and key modular infrastructure need TIA to pay for blobspace. The Genesis Drop allocates TIA to public GitHub contributors to the organisations represented by Celestia Ecosystem Map v3 (see below), and participants in the Celestia’s Modular Fellows program, cohort 1.

Eligibility criteria

• Members of GitHub organisations and public GitHub contributors to up to two of the organisation’s repositories, based on:
  • The Modular ecosystem map and Celestia ecosystem map presented on Day 2 of Modular Summit 2 (July 2023)
  • Organisations represented at Modular Summits 1 (Amsterdam, 2022) and Modular Summit 2 (Paris, 2023)
• GitHub accounts of Celestia Modular Fellows, cohort 1

Exclusion criteria

• Members of the Celestia Labs team and advisors

GitHub super-contributors – 5,650,000 TIA

Additional TIA are allocated to the Github contributors with at least 4 total commits across all eligible repositories and even more TIA to contributors with at least 23 total commits in the Research and Public Goods and Early Modular Ecosystem criteria.

Eligibility criteria

• Contributor, ≥23 total commits
  • Public Github contributors with at least 23 commits across all eligible repositories
• Contributor, ≥4 total commits
  • Public Github contributors with at least 4 commits across all eligible repositories

Early adopters of Ethereum rollups – 20,000,000 TIA

The Genesis Drop allocates 20,000,000 TIA to the top 50% of active users of the top 10 Ethereum rollups by TVL on L2Beat with a balance of $50, snapshotted 1 January 2023 (Ethereum block 16308181):

• OP Mainnet
• Arbitrum One
• Arbitrum Nova
• Starknet
• zkSync Lite
• dYdX (StarkEx)
• Immutable (StarkEx)
• SoRare (StarkEx)
• Loopring
• Metis Andromeda

To determine a users’ onchain activity level, the Genesis Drop allocates points to onchain behaviours on Ethereum and all eligible rollups. These points are used to create a composite score used to invite actual early adopters and power users, especially rewarding the following onchain behaviours:

• interacting with smart contracts and applications
• holding an ENS domain
• donating to Gitcoin
• ETH spent on gas
• Recency of the last transaction

This approach was adapted from Trusta Labs’ MEDIA score methodology, which was designed to measure users’ levels of onchain engagement and the scoring method. Addresses highly suspected as sybils and/or non-user addresses were removed using lists from OP Airdrop 1, Hop Protocol, and Trusta Labs’ sybil detection framework.

Eligibility criteria

• Users with a snapshotted balance of $50 onchain or bridged to the top 10 Ethereum rollups by TVL on L2 Beat, as of 20 April, 2023
  • Snapshot: Ethereum block 16308181 (1 January 2023)
  • Balances collected onchain on OP Mainnet, Arbitrum One, and via rollup bridge contracts for ZK Sync Lite, DyDx (StarkEx), Immutable (StarkEx), SoRare (StarkEx), Loopring, Metis Andromeda, and Starknet
  • Onchain data collected using Dune Analytics

• An address’s activity score is defined using the Ethereum/Rollups Scoring Method, which generates a composite score out of 23 for each address by weighting the following set of onchain behaviours before 1 January 2023:
  • Recency of their last transaction (prior to 1 January 2023 snapshot)
  • Holding an ENS domain (.eth)
  • Gitcoin donation
  • Number of smart contract interactions on Ethereum Mainnet, Optimism, or Arbitrum One
  • Age of the account
  • Active months
  • Number of months in which the address made a transaction onchain
  • Number of transactions
  • Total value of all transactions in USD
  • Gas spent (USD)

Exclusion criteria

• Widely used lists of sybils and non-user addresses, such as exchanges, relayers, etc. provided by:
  • Hop’s sybil list
  • Hop’s exchange/relayer blocklist
  • OP Airdrop #1 sybil filter
• Ethereum and rollup addresses identified by Trusta Labs as having a high likelihood of being sybils based on their methodology to identify onchain clustering behaviour and asset transfer graphs
  • Trusta sybil detection methodology overview
• Known addresses connected to onchain exploits and other compliance criteria

Stakers and IBC relayers, Cosmos Hub and Osmosis - 20,000,000 TIA

Stakers - 18,500,000 TIA

The Genesis Drop allocates TIA to Cosmos Hub and Osmosis stakers and delegators of ≥ $75, inviting them to join Celestia and participate in securing and governing the network.

To allocate more TIA to more active addresses, eligibility is broken down across three levels of stake and onchain activity, derived by multiplying stake and an onchain activity score.

An address’s activity score, adapted from Trusta Labs’ MEDIA framework, is based on its onchain behavior, such as IBC transactions, the recency of its last transaction, number of active months and other metrics described below.

• Cosmos Hub and Osmosis stakers and delegators of ≥ $75, snapshotted before 1 January 2023
  • Cosmos Hub block: 13482205
  • Osmosis block: 7592794
• An address’s eligibility bucket is determined by multiplying the address’s stake with its activity score
• An address’s activity score measures the address’s level of onchain activity. The metric is defined and measured according to this Cosmos/Osmosis Scoring Method adapted from Trusta Labs’ MEDIA score framework, which generates a composite score out of 15 based on:
  • Recency of their last transaction (prior to Jan 1 2023 snapshot)
  • Number of IBC transactions
  • Total value of all transactions in USD
  • Age of the account
  • Number of transactions
  • Gas spent in USD

IBC relayers - 1,500,000 TIA

IBC relayers are unsung heroes of the Interchain and will help make modular chains interoperate.

Eligibility criteria (IBC relayers)

• Addresses making MsgRecvPacket transactions onchain before 1 January 2023 (Cosmos Hub block 13482205, Osmosis block 7592794).
  • Data provided by Numia

Exclusion criteria

• Cosmos and Osmosis addresses identified by Trusta Labs as having a very high likelihood of being sybils based on their methodology using onchain clustering behaviour and asset transfer graphs
• Known exchange addresses on Cosmos Hub and Osmosis labeled by Numia as well as known addresses connected to onchain exploits and other compliance criteria.

Stay safe

genesis.celestia.org is the only URL you can use to check and claim eligibility for the Genesis Drop. Tokens will be accessible directly via your wallet in Celestia’s first block. TIA is not available via any other method and is not listed on exchanges. TIA will never be distributed via surprise giveaways on Twitter.

No person from Celestia Labs or the Celestia Foundation will ever:

• Ask you for your seed phrase or private key
• DM you first about the Genesis Drop
• Request any information from you other than what is required on genesis.celestia.org
• Ask you to send them TIA or tokens of any kind