According to CoinDesk, Celestia Foundation, the team behind the Celestia blockchain network, announced on Monday that it has raised $100 million in a fundraising round led by Bain Capital Crypto. This new capital brings the foundation's total funds to $155 million, with participation from Syncracy Capital, 1kx, Robot Ventures, and Placeholder. The team did not specify the intended use for the new funds but emphasized that core developers are focused on a new roadmap unveiled earlier this month.
Celestia's native token, TIA, has seen a significant decline, down 54% since the beginning of 2024, according to CoinMarketCap. Despite this, Celestia had one of the most notable airdrops of 2023, distributing TIA to 580,000 users. Mustafa Al-Bassam, co-founder of Celestia, stated in a blog post that the launch of Celestia last year marked a significant advancement in blockchain technology, scaling blockspace from the dial-up era to the broadband era. The new technical roadmap aims to further scale blockspace to the fiber optic era while maintaining verifiability and low latency.
Celestia is part of a growing sector of modular blockchains designed to address scalability issues by enhancing transaction speed and execution. It also offers data availability services, which are promoted as a more cost-effective alternative to storing data on layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum.