Layer 1 blockchain Celestia has launched its "Mamaki" test network, moving one step closer to the first fully functional modular blockchain, the company announced Wednesday.
Modular networks allow users to create their own blockchains at scale while maintaining the security standards of competing Layer 1 blockchains by separating consensus from execution.
Because Celestia does not validate transactions itself, blockchains deployed on the network avoid state execution bottlenecks, a growing problem on networks like Ethereum.
The project, backed by venture firm NFX, Cosmos developer Zaki Manian and a handful of others, believes its technology could put an end to the "monolithic era" of Layer 1 competition and provide a solution that is ultimately more sovereign and scalable for mass adoption, according to a press release.
"This will change the way anyone building in Web 3 can scale. From NFTs to games, pretty much everything has an impact here," Celestia Labs' Ekram Ahmed said in an interview with CoinDesk. "We are still in the early stages, and our mainnet will be in early 2023."
Celestia Crypto
Celestia was founded by Mustafa Al-Bassam, a prominent hacktivist and developer known to many for being arrested by the FBI as a 16-year-old in 2011.
On the technical side, the Mamaki testnet (named after the Hawaiian tea) supports users running nodes, receiving testnet tokens, delegating from validators and sending transactions between wallets, according to a press release.
Celestia notes that Mamaki is not the blockchain's incentive-based testnet (which rewards users with tokens for participation), which it plans to move closer to the project's main network next year.