Celestia Upgrade Details: Main Features and Enhancements

Author: pedro Source: Modular Media Translation: Shannouba, Golden Finance

Celestia’s first major upgrade: Lemongrass.

Lemongrass introduces several key improvements and features aimed at enhancing the functionality, security, and overall user experience of the Data Availability Layer (DA Layer). This article will delve into each new feature and explain the associated Celestia Improvement Proposals (CIPS) and their significance.

Lemongrass Upgrade Overview

As mentioned above, Lemongrass marks the first major upgrade of Celestia, which is planned to be deployed on the Arabica testnet this month, then on the Mocha testnet, and finally on the Celestia Mainnet BETA from early to mid-September.

Lemongrass总共包含 5 个 CIP：

• CIP-6: Price Enforcement
• CIP-9: Data Packet Forwarding Middleware
• CIP-10: Coordinate Upgrade
• CIP-14: Inter-chain account (ICA)
• CIP-20: Disable the Blobstream module

Now, let’s break down these contents and explain their importance:

CIP-6: Price Enforcement

CIP-6 introduces a minimum price execution mechanism, which establishes a global minimum gas price for all transactions on Celestia enforced by Consensus. This means that the community decides through governance the minimum amount of UTIA (stake denomination: 1 TIA = 1,000,000) required for each exchange.

Don’t worry, through chain abstraction (more specifically, gas abstraction), end users won’t need to worry about any gas payment in the future (*knocks on wood).

Advantages of CIP-6

• Transaction Priority: gas fees act as a bidding mechanism. When the network is congested, transactions from users willing to pay higher fees will be processed faster, ensuring that high-value transactions, as perceived by users, will be included in the Block when demand is high.
• Spam Prevention: By charging a minimum fee for each transaction, the chain prevents users from sending a large number of low-value transactions to the network. Since each transaction incurs a cost, attackers must spend a lot of resources to send a large number of transactions to the network, making DDoS attacks more expensive and unfeasible. In short, the number of transactions you can send on the network is limited before running out of funds to pay for gas fees.
• Stable and predictable pricing: Aggregation itself can better predict Transaction Cost, enabling more reliable financial planning.
• Preventing Fee Manipulation: Since the lowest global fee is determined by community governance, validators cannot undercut each other or engage in off-chain transactions, ensuring fairness.

Overall, CIP-6 ensures that both aggregators and end users can benefit from stable, secure, and predictable pricing on the Celestia network.

CIP-9: Data Packet Forwarding Middleware

CIP-9 introduces Packet Forwarding Middleware (PFM) and enhances Celestia’s existing Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, in other words, improving the way Celestia communicates and shares information with other IBC chains. For those who don’t know, IBC is a protocol used for interchain trustless communication, used throughout the Cosmos ecosystem, but now entering Ethereum and other chains through teams like Union and Polymer.

The role of CIP-9 is to enhance the existing IBC functionality of Celestia by integrating Packet Forwarding Middleware (PFM). The middleware adds advanced routing and processing capabilities, improving the efficiency, reliability, and user experience of Cross-Chain Interaction transactions. It also maintains the interchangeability of Tokens and ensures that Tokens retain their properties on multiple on-chain platforms.

Before PFM, Celestia supported basic Token transfers between chains within the IBC ecosystem. After the upgrade, Celestia will support advanced multi-hop functionality, allowing Tokens to be seamlessly routed across multiple chains.

Assume that user Alice wants to exchange ETH on chain A for TIA on chain B. Without PFM, she would need to manually handle each step, which is both time-consuming and complicated. With PFM, she can initiate the exchange, and PFM handles the entire process, routing the Token to any necessary chain. At the same time, the interchangeability of the Token is maintained.

Let’s take an example scenario:

• Alice wants to exchange Token X (ETH) on chain A for Token Y (TIA) on chain B. The DEX she is using supports Token X (ETH) and Token Y (TIA), but requires routing through chain C (intermediate chain) to complete the exchange.
• If there is no PFM: The exchange will require multiple manual steps, and Alice may need to handle each transfer separately.
• Using PFM: Alice initiates a swap on DEX, specifying Token X (ETH) on chain A and Token Y (TIA) on chain B, with PFM handling the routing. It sends Token X (ETH) on chain A to chain C and forwards Token X (ETH) on chain C to chain B, swapping it for Token Y (TIA).
• From Alice’s perspective, she experienced a seamless Token exchange without worrying about the underlying complexity of Cross-Chain Interaction transactions. She initiated the exchange and received Token Y on chain B.

Ultimately, CIP-9 improves the efficiency of Cross-Chain Interaction transactions, enabling developers to build more advanced and efficient Cross-Chain Interaction dApps, while end users enjoy a smoother and more seamless Cross-Chain Interaction experience.

CIP-10: Upgrade Coordination

This is relatively easy to understand. CIP-10 introduces a new method of coordinating Celestia network upgrades to ensure smoother transitions between different versions of network software.

First, let’s introduce how to handle the Celestia hard fork (upgrade).

Essentially, you need coordination between the Celestia Labs team and Celestia validators to ‘understand what they need to do to prepare for the upcoming Hard Fork’ (download new software or upgrade your Node).

After this Lemongrass upgrade or any major upgrade in the future, the old Celestia network will no longer be compatible with the new network, which is why validator coordination is so important.

So, how do Celestia validators know when to upgrade or when an upgrade has occurred? This is essentially the purpose of CIP.

Previously, upgrades were handled by setting a specific Block height at which the upgrade would occur - for example, ‘At Block #1,000,000, every validator must upgrade their Node in order to continue generating Blocks for the chain.’ Validators had to manually update their Nodes based on this Block height, and improper coordination could lead to issues.

This is what we will see after upgrading to Lemongrass.

After the upgrade of Lemongrass or the official integration of CIP-10 into Celestia, future upgrades will use an on-chain signaling system, validators can indicate their readiness through this system. Specifically, once 5/6 (approximately 83.33%) of the total voting power indicates readiness for the new proposed version, the network is considered ready for the upgrade.

Network upgrades can be complex and risky. This new protocol upgrade will ensure that there are enough validators ready before transitioning to the new version of the network, thereby minimizing the risk of interruptions and network downtime as much as possible.

CIP-14: Cross-chain account

CIP-14 introduces Cross-Chain Interaction account into Celestia, allowing one chain to control an on-chain account of another chain via IBC. This is one of the exciting features for many in the community, as it plays an important role in one of the biggest use cases of TIA - liquidity staking.

Working principle of ICA:

There are two main participants to keep in mind:

• Control Chain: A chain that creates and manages an on-chain account. It sends commands to the mainchain (e.g., Celestia acting as the control chain).
• mainchain： The chain where the account is located, managed by the control chain, executing commands received from the control chain (e.g. Stride).

As a mainchain, Celestia can use the ‘allow list’ to control which messages ICA can execute. While ICAs have a wide range of flexibility, their main purpose is stake in Liquidity.

Liquiditystake providers (LSP) allow users to stake their TIA Token, while retaining Liquidity through Liquiditystake Derivatives (such as stTIA on Stride). This has a dual benefit: users can continue to receive TIA stake rewards, while using the underlying value in other Decentralized Finance applications. However, it comes with risks, such as increasing protocol layer or relying on third-party trust in the Multi-signature setup.

LSP can accumulate a large amount of stakeToken in the network. If these tokens are only delegated to a few validators, it will lead to the centralization of network voting power and decision-making power. Therefore, Celestia’s LSP must adhere to key principles such as Decentralization, minimal trust, and community governance.

By implementing ICA, Celestia can support protocols such as Stride and provide Decentralization and Liquidity stake services that align with community values. In practice, this means that users on Celestia can manage their stake activities on Stride without relying on centralized entities. For example, users can stake TIA on Stride and receive stTIA (stake TIA), while still being able to directly manage all related operations from their Celestia account (such as delegation, reward collection, and unstaking).

Users can benefit from a seamless experience across different chains. They can interact with multiple chains without manually managing accounts on each chain. This makes using the Cross-Chain Interaction application simpler and more intuitive.

CIP-20: Disable BlobStream Module

Finally, Celestia’s Lemongrass upgrade will implement CIP-20, focusing on removing the old Blobstream module from Celestia as it has been replaced by the more advanced Blobstream X.

According to the official page of CIP-20, this is part of the ongoing effort to clean up outdated or unnecessary components in the system. While this change will not directly affect end users, it is an important step in optimizing the entire system. Removing outdated components helps ensure the network runs smoothly and efficiently.

Conclusion

The upgrade of Lemongrass is an important step forward for Celestia, not only in terms of technological enhancement, but also in preparing for the future development of the network. Each CIP is strategically designed to address specific challenges and opportunities.

CIP-6 is a key measure to maintain pricing stability and fairness, which is crucial as more and more aggregation and applications start using Celestia. CIP -9 enhances Cross-Chain Interaction communication, and as Block chain interoperability rises, this feature will become increasingly important. CIP -10 makes upgrades more efficient and lower risk, which is essential in the network expansion process. CIP -14 introduces the groundbreaking feature of Cross-Chain Interaction account, paving the way for more complex and Decentralization applications. Finally, CIP-20 is a necessary internal management step to ensure the network remains streamlined and optimized.