Celestia (TIA)
Unlock Schedule
Celestia (TIA) Token Unlock & Vesting Schedule
The unlock chart above provides a clear visual overview of the Celestia (TIA) token release schedule, showing when and how tokens enter circulation across investor, team, treasury, and community allocations. Understanding these tokenomics dynamics is critical for evaluating potential supply pressure, inflation impact, and market liquidity over time — key factors that can influence TIA price performance.
Each color segment in the chart corresponds to a specific allocation group described in the Allocations section below. Underlying assumptions and data models used to reconstruct this schedule are explained in detail under Assumptions, while broader utility insights and token use cases are covered in Tokenomics & Utility.
Tokenomics & Utility
The TIA token is central to how the Celestia blockchain works.
What TIA is used for
- Paying for blobspace: rollups submit PayForBlobs (PFB) transactions and pay fees in TIA.
- Securing the network: users stake TIA to validators and can participate in governance.
- Gas for rollups (optional): developers can choose TIA as a gas token for their rollups if they want a fast start. (blog.celestia.org)
Supply and allocations
Celestia launched with a genesis supply of 1 billion TIA. Allocations included a public allocation, R&D & ecosystem funds, early backers across seed and Series A/B, and initial core contributors. Unlock schedules are staggered by category over multiple years; for example, public allocation was unlocked at launch, while other categories unlock from year one onward on a defined schedule. (docs.celestia.org)
Issuance and staking rewards
TIA follows a disinflationary issuance schedule that has been adjusted through community proposals. The Lotus set of CIPs reduces inflation by about a third while aligning staking rewards and validator commissions. Ongoing research explores further models—such as Proof‑of‑Governance (PoG)—that could lower issuance over time while preserving security. (blog.celestia.org)
Assumptions
- Supply is uncapped; PoS issuance modeled from 2023-10-31 through 2033-10-30.
Celestia has ongoing inflationary issuance (Cosmos SDK-based) with no hard cap; model limited to a 10-year horizon for charting.
- Yearly issuance is computed using ADR-019: rate applied to total supply at year start with time-based block provisions.
Official ADR-019 specifies time-based inflation and yearly base supply calculation.
- CIP-29 Lotus reduced inflation by ~33% effective 2025-07-28; Year 2 split into pre/post-upgrade sub-periods using exact calendar fractions (271/365 and 94/365).
Docs provide mainnet activation timestamp for Lotus; partial-year calculation approximated by day fractions.
- Post-2025-07-28 issuance decreases 6.7% per year until reaching a 1.5% floor; v6/Matcha (CIP-41) not assumed active on mainnet as of 2025-10-08.
Docs list v6 mainnet as TBD; blog indicates ‘on its way’ but not activated; thus not modeled.
- PoS issuance shown represents total minted rewards (including 2% community pool share).
Docs specify 2% of block rewards go to the community pool; this is part of issuance even if governance-controlled.
- After Lotus (CIP-31), staking rewards earned by vesting accounts become subject to the same lockup; this dataset treats PoS issuance as minted supply, not tracing per-account re-locking.
Chain-wide data on the proportion of rewards to vesting vs. unlocked accounts is not publicly consolidated; modeling granular re-locking would require on-chain account-level analysis.
- Genesis unlock dates use 2024-10-30 for the 1-year cliffs due to leap-year note in official docs.
Docs specify yearly intervals occur on October 30 in 2024.
- 1. https://docs.celestia.org/learn/staking-governance-supply
- 2. https://docs.celestia.org/learn/tia
- 3. https://github.com/celestiaorg/celestia-app/blob/main/docs/architecture/adr-019-strict-inflation-schedule.md
- 4. https://cips.celestia.org/cip-029.html
- 5. https://blog.celestia.org/lotus/
- 6. https://docs.celestia.org/how-to-guides/network-upgrade-process
- 7. https://blog.celestia.org/celestia-mainnet-is-live/
- 8. https://blog.celestia.org/genesis-drop/
- 9. https://cips.celestia.org/cip-031.html
Allocations
Description
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Celestia is a modular blockchain network that allows anyone to create their own blockchain with minimal overhead and high security. It separates the consensus and execution layers and supports various execution environments such as EVM and Cosmos SDK.
| Sector: | Modular |
| Blockchain: | Cosmos |