Celestia community is in a public opinion crisis, founder proposes disruptive governance reform

Recently, the Celestia project, which has drawn considerable attention, has once again become the focus of discussion within the crypto community. Amid the continuous decline in the price of TIA tokens and the marginalization of the project narrative, network revenue has been sluggish, and the feasibility of the data availability track has come under scrutiny. In this context, its co-founder has proposed a governance proposal with significant transformative implications.

Abandon the staking mechanism and shift to "governance proof" model

The co-founder recently proposed a revolutionary governance proposal, suggesting that the network completely abandon the current proof-of-stake mechanism in favor of a "governance proof" model. This proposal has sparked widespread discussion in the crypto community, directly addressing the core concept of blockchain governance structure.

If the proposal is approved, the Celestia network will undergo a series of significant changes:

1. The issuance of TIA tokens will be significantly reduced by about 20 times, with circulating inflation compressed by 95%.
2. The existing delegated staking and liquid staking contracts will be fully abolished, and the on-chain governance mechanism will be simultaneously terminated.
3. The newly issued TIA will be used entirely to pay for off-chain incentives for validator running nodes.
4. The election of validators will be determined by an off-chain governance mechanism, no longer relying on token voting.
5. A fee-burning mechanism is adopted, with approximately $100-300 in protocol revenue used daily to support the value of TIA.

The founder even proposed to completely remove the concept of "staking." He believes that, with the cancellation of token issuance rewards and staking voting to elect validators, the act of "staking" becomes redundant, and liquid staking tokens also lose their basis for existence, with TIA itself becoming a direct vehicle for value capture.

This proposal aims to address the inflationary pressure of the long-term decline in TIA prices by constructing a more scarce and compact token economic model, injecting fundamental logic for the long-term value of the network. However, it also challenges several assumptions in mainstream Ethereum consensus, such as whether the economic security of the blockchain truly relies on punitive mechanisms, whether proof of stake is indeed a variant of "authorized proof" with permissions, and whether blockchain systems can achieve sustainable operation through a "non-governance profit model."

Large-scale cashing out by the team raises questions

However, just as this governance proposal aimed at "rebuilding the token economic foundation" has yet to be implemented, the community has continuously exposed the Celestia team's significant cash-out behavior, leading to divergent interpretations of the proposal's original intent. On one hand, the project party emphasizes that the new model is expected to curb inflation, repair the token model, and restore market confidence; on the other hand, on-chain data shows that several core team members rapidly completed large cash-outs after the unlocking window opened, accumulating over 100 million dollars in cash-outs, raising questions in the market.

Community users accuse the Celestia core team of serious lack of transparency in multiple areas such as token unlocks, fund operations, and market promotion. It has been disclosed that Celestia executives completed the TIA token unlock as early as the beginning of October last year, after which several core members realized significant cash-out through over-the-counter trading or resource swaps.

A crypto KOL has released an internal team token distribution and monetization data sheet for Celestia, showing that team members have sold a total of approximately 9.43 million TIA, with an estimated cumulative cash amount of up to 109 million USD based on market prices at the time. The largest sell-off address has sold 2,609,516.29 TIA, corresponding to 27,368,523.82 USD in cash. Multiple addresses have sell-off amounts exceeding one million USD, indicating that the team was actively monetizing at the early stage of the token unlock.

Disconnection Between Project Revenue and Valuation

Despite Celestia's current valuation being marked by outsiders at $3.5 billion, its actual revenue is far from supporting such inflated valuation. According to public data, Celestia's daily average protocol revenue is less than a hundred dollars, with an annual potential of only around $5 million. Industry insiders generally point out that Celestia's market pricing resembles a premium advance on "future narratives" rather than being based on existing usage data or business models.

In the face of various accusations and public opinion turmoil, the founder of Celestia publicly stated that despite the current market being filled with negative remarks, all founding members, early employees, and core engineers are still on duty. He also revealed that Celestia currently has over 100 million dollars in reserves, with sufficient cash flow to support operations for more than 6 years.

The founder stated on social media: "To survive in this industry, every project must go through storms. Almost all tokens experience a 95% crash during their lifecycle, which is the norm rather than the exception." Currently, TIA has dropped 92% from its all-time high.