Celestia Launches Testnet for First Modular Blockchain Network

Layer 1 blockchain Celestia has launched its “Mamaki” testnet, making it one step closer to becoming the first fully functional modular blockchain, the company announced Wednesday.

Modular networks allow users to spin up their own blockchains at scale while maintaining the security standards of rival layer 1s, separating consensus from execution.

Because Celestia doesn’t validate transactions themselves, blockchains deployed on the network avoid being bottlenecked by state execution, a growing problem with networks like Ethereum.

The project – backed by venture firm NFX, Cosmos developer Zaki Manian and a handful of others – believes its tech could put an end to the “monolithic era” of layer 1 competition, providing a solution that is ultimately more sovereign and scalable for mass adoption, according to a press release.

“This will change the way that anyone who’s building in Web 3 can scale. From NFTs to gaming, pretty much everything has implications here,” Celestia Labs’ Ekram Ahmed told CoinDesk in an interview. “We are still in the earlier phases, and our mainnet will be in early 2023.”

Celestia was founded by Mustafa Al-Bassam, a prominent hacktivist and developer many know from being arrested by the FBI as a 16-year-old in 2011.

On the technical end, the Mamaki testnet (named after the Hawaiian tea) supports users operating nodes, receiving testnet tokens, delegating from validators and sending transactions between wallets, according to a press release.

Celestia notes that Mamaki is not the blockchain’s incentivized testnet (which rewards users with tokens for participation) that will be launched closer to the project’s mainnet next year.