Celestia Raises $100 Million Ahead of $1 Billion Token Unlock

The Celestia Foundation, the organization behind the modular blockchain and data availability protocol of the same name, has raised $100 million in a funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Syncracy Capital, 1kx, and others. Total financing for the project now tops $155 million.

The nine-figure investment will help scale the network to 1 gigabyte blocks, a goal recently unveiled by the foundation.

“In a previous era, the throughput of Visa (~24,000 TPS) was considered an impressive North Star. With 1 gigabyte blocks, Celestia is tracking to deliver the capacity of many Visa networks in parallel,” touts a press release.

The project’s native TIA token spiked 14% to $6.16 on the news. TIA hit an all-time high of almost $21 in February amid the prevailing airdrop farming craze, but has since lost two-thirds of its value.

Today’s raise comes a month prior to Celestia’s first major token unlock event on Oct. 30, which will distribute 17.68% of the TIA supply – worth $1.1 billion at current prices – to investors and core contributors.

TIA’s initial airdrop allocated 6% of the token’s supply to eligible users, including those who contributed to public goods and other research efforts associated with Celestia, early adopters of Arbitrum and Optimism, and stakers in the Cosmos ecosystem.