Celestia to integrate with Polygon CDK for data availability in 2024

The Celestia network will integrate with Polygon’s chain development kit (CDK) sometime “early next year,” according to a Dec. 11 announcement. The integration will provide an “easily-pluggable component” for Polygon-based networks to use Celestia for data availability.

*Celestia block explorer “Celenium.” Source: Celenium*

The announcement claimed that transaction fees could be reduced by more than 100 times if networks stored compressed transaction data on Celestia instead of Ethereum. The integration coming in early 2024 will simplify this choice, providing this option within the Polygon CDK software itself.

“This is the broadband moment for Web3,” said Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. “The ability to launch a high-throughput ZK-powered Ethereum layer 2 as easily as deploying a smart contract will do for blockchain adoption what high-speed fiber did for Web2 applications.”

Polygon CDK software allows developers to create new blockchain networks that are part of a broader Polygon ecosystem. It is currently being used by OKX, Astar, Canto, Gnosis Pay, Palm and IDEX, according to the announcement.

Some Polygon-based networks, including Polygon zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine, are “rollups” that store transaction data directly on the Ethereum network. Others are “validiums” that only store validation proofs on Ethereum while leaving the actual compressed transaction data on a separate network. Aside from Celestia, Avail is another network that can store transaction data for validiums.