A Proposal for Web3 Proliferation: Secure Data Primitives on Celestia

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Celestia’s approach to data availability gets to the core value proposition of blockchain networks: Democratized access and contribution to reliably-secure data sources. Celestia is striving to bootstrap renewed growth in the ecosystem’s development through new, modular primitives that enable increased communication between protocols. In line with Celestia’s primary goal of being the standard for on-chain data availability, there should be a renewed emphasis on the tools that maximize the analytical utility of this data. This article is meant to support efforts to examine the tools Celestia currently provides for data analysis, which new additions could be beneficial, and how to analyze Celestia’s data now.

Celestia’s approach to data availability gets to the core value proposition of blockchain networks: Democratized access and contribution to reliably-secure data sources.

Currently, Celestia can be analyzed in the following ways:

Through the Gateway API

• The Gateway API is a REST API that allows you to send and receive messages to and from the Gateway. The Gateway API wraps methods from the JSON RPC API and is accessible after a node is set up for this purpose.
• This is intended as the primary access point for data found on the Data Availability layer related to other networks and applications.

Through the RPC API

• The RPC API allows one to interact directly with Celestia data availability nodes and acquire information about data in several different categories.
• This is intended as an access point for information related to consensus on the Data Availability layer, such as node and validator information.

Examples from Tendermint

There are many ways to leverage the data from these sources, especially since Celestia is fundamentally based on Tendermint and processes its transactions in a similar way. For example, a Tendermint-based API/RPC tool that has proven helpful is subscribing to events via Websocket. Using Websocket methodologies and others, there are plenty of ways to get data from a Tendermint network in a recurring, automated way. With a recurring subscription to specific types of event data, one could build a strong database for network analysis relatively quickly. Here is a list of the types of event types one could subscribe to:

Additionally, here is a list of values that should be used along with certain event types:

For example, if one wanted to receive an update whenever the validator set for a network changes (Event = ValidatorSetUpdates), they would use the following:

# connect to tendermint websocket at port 8080
ws ws://localhost:26657/websocket

# subscribe to new Tendermint validator set updates
> { "jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "subscribe", "params": ["tm.event='ValidatorSetUpdates'"], "id": 1 }

The response would look something like this:

{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "id": 0,
    "result": {
        "query": "tm.event='ValidatorSetUpdates'",
        "data": {
            "type": "tendermint/event/ValidatorSetUpdates",
            "value": {
              "validator_updates": [
                {
                  "address": "09EAD022FD25DE3A02E64B0FE9610B1417183EE4",
                  "pub_key": {
                    "type": "tendermint/PubKeyEd25519",
                    "value": "ww0z4WaZ0Xg+YI10w43wTWbBmM3dpVza4mmSQYsd0ck="
                  },
                  "voting_power": "10",
                  "proposer_priority": "0"
                }
              ]
            }
        }
    }
}

Including similar types of call points and expanding them to include data from other non-Tendermint chains at the data availability layer would prove invaluable to app developers and for comprehensive analytics purposes. The data that would assist Celestia-related development could include metrics such as the efficiency of data availability, measuring verification across light clients, and contributions to the DA layer. These types of primitives could allow app developers to take into account the entire picture of blockchains that take part in Celestia’s DA layer. In line with Celestia’s mission to be a comprehensive data availability layer, data like this could be democratized through an explorer that unifies this data in a single source anyone can search.

Analyzing The Blockspace Race

In applying the methods found above, the data found on Celestia’s incentivized testnet (The Blockspace Race) could be analyzed in the following ways to help others understand what goes into sustainable network development:

1. Staking data from the testnet could be used as a control group for understanding healthy staking ratios of testnet tokens that don’t currently have any economic value, but represent potential future economic value based on present performance.
2. Block proposer data and comparisons could be analyzed for the actual level of randomness associated with the likelihood of proposing a new block on Celestia.
3. Latency data for the time spent between Data Availability attestation and response from the bridge contract on Ethereum for a comprehensive security analysis of DA consensus and on-chain execution now that the Quantum Gravity Bridge is live.

Proliferation through Celestia Lightnodes

One of the most notable aspects of Celestia’s architecture is the ease of running a light node and its ability to provide reliable access to consensus at a fraction of the hardware requirements of full nodes. Light nodes can be used through the Gateway API in essentially the same way as a full node, with functions such as querying balances, interacting with Celestia, and sending transactions. This high level of functionality is notable because it is expected that light nodes in the future could be run from a smartphone wallet app, leading to increased security for mobile transactions.

Looking Ahead

These are just a few examples, but there is much to be excited about in the modular future Celestia is trying to create. Data availability speaks to the core tenets of decentralization and minimizes the risk of potentially disastrous exploits related to current cross-chain bridging technology. In short, the spirit of Celestia is to usher in the modular, interconnected on-chain future we’ve all been striving toward. The next generation of primitives that don’t compromise security will allow builders to not only expand the reach of decentralized technology but also increase their own sovereignty in the web3 economy.