Celestia’s blob sizes surge 10x amid rising transactions and NFT activity

Celestia has experienced a significant and sustained increase in blob sizes over the past two weeks. For added context, Celestia’s blob size can be interchangeably referenced as the number of blobs posted on Celestia. 

Between June 20 and Dec. 20, 2024, the average blob size on Celestia was approximately 1.18 GB. Yet this figure has nearly tenfold in size over the last two weeks, to an average of 11.4 GB.

Similarly, daily transactions on Celestia have also substantially increased during this period. Using the same timeframe (June 20 to Dec. 20), Celestia averaged around 44,000 transactions per day. Over the last two weeks, this number has grown by over 60%, with a daily average of 71,000 transactions.

The nearly tenfold increase in blob sizes is likely due to an NFT mint that occurred during this period, as well as more projects choosing to utilize Celestia as a data availability layer.

The NFT mint in question involved the Mammoth Overlord NFTs on the Forma blockchain, which utilizes Celestia. Another example is RARI chain’s  decision to integrate Celestia on Dec. 23.

It is worth pointing out that almost the entirety of the blobs posted on Celestia in this heightened period over the last two weeks have been due to Eclipse , an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain that utilizes a Solana virtual machine and Celestia as its data availability layer.

Interestingly, from the time Celestia’s blob size first experienced a spike on Dec. 23, the market capitalization of TIA has increased by roughly 14% to the time of writing. TIA’s market cap currently stands at $2.62 billion, with a fully diluted valuation of around $6 billion, down 54% since the beginning of 2024.

This is an excerpt from  The Block's Data Insights newsletter . Dig into the numbers making up the industry's most thought-provoking trends.