Modular Expansion is here. Celestia’s next upgrade, Lotus, will include Hyperlane, enabling native TIA interop to new chains and ecosystems. At launch, Celestia will connect with Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum One, Eclipse, and Abstract.
The Road to Modular Expansion
Two years ago, Hyperlane's core contributors bet on the expansion of modular blockchains: a future where developers could choose the best purpose-built option for each layer of the blockchain stack for their specific needs. Back then, Hyperlane connected just 15 chains. Today, Hyperlane connects 150, a testament to the scalability of the open, permissionless framework connecting the expanding modular ecosystem.
Celestia pioneered the modular vision as the first blockchain to separate core blockchain components- specifically consensus and data availability from execution - to unlock high-throughput rollups and L2s and deliver full-stack control to the most ambitious builders. Similarly, Hyperlane adopts a modular approach to interoperability by separating messaging from verification - allowing each part of the stack to be customized.
Fast forward to today, and Hyperlane is powering Celestia's expansion beyond Cosmos. For the first time, native TIA - issued directly from Celestia mainnet - will be available on Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum One, Eclipse, and Abstract, all through Hyperlane.
This integration lays the groundwork for Celestia’s long-term vision for its ecosystem: to implement ZK verification and enable its rollups to directly bridge assets via Celestia. With Hyperlane's modular design, Celestia can have its cake and eat it too: unlocking native TIA interop today while being able to seamlessly transition over to ZK verification when it's ready.
Why Is Celestia Expanding Native TIA?
Celestia is the first and largest modular blockchain - providing data availability (DA) services for rollups and L2s. To post data to Celestia, users pay in TIA, Celestia’s native token. All around, TIA is foundational to Celestia and its ecosystem - beyond paying for DA, TIA also secures Celestia through staking, facilitates governance, and helps bootstrap new chains.
As the Celestia ecosystem grows, TIA needs to be easy to get to where developers are building and users are most active. Expanding native TIA - issued directly from Celestia - helps by:
- Making TIA widely accessible across Celestia rollups and high-liquidity environments.
- Delivering a smoother, more integrated user and developer experience across chains.
- Minimizing friction in getting TIA where it’s needed.
To enable this, Celestia needed a modular interop solution that could scale easily with the growing Celestia ecosystem - this led them to Hyperlane.
Modular Expansion, Connected By Hyperlane.
Celestia is expanding native TIA with Hyperlane. Hyperlane is no stranger to moving TIA around, facilitating over $1B in bridging volume for wrapped TIA across Cosmos chains like Neutron and Stride, as well as L2s like Arbitrum One and Eclipse. Now, just as Hyperlane has expanded beyond Cosmos to multiple major ecosystems, Celestia is bringing native TIA to new ecosystems.
By integrating Hyperlane, Celestia gets:
- Multi-VM Interop: Rollups like Eclipse (SVM) already use Celestia - but without native TIA on their chains - accessing TIA previously required bridging TIA over from Cosmos. With Hyperlane’s multi-VM coverage across 150 chains, Celestia users can now get native TIA wherever it is needed.
- Sovereignty: With Hyperlane, Celestia developers retains full ownership over its interop stack. This means they can push new integrations, security mechanisms, or other features as they see fit - and are never bottlenecked by another team to do so.
- Open-Source Interop: Hyperlane’s framework is fully open-source,publicly available, and permissionless. Celestia core devs were able to deploy Hyperlane, configure it to their specific needs, and will soon deploy TIA Warp Routes on their own terms.
With Hyperlane, Celestia unlocks more than just a simple chain A → chain B connection: the Celestia ecosystem now fully owns its interoperability stack, and can deploy, configure, and upgrade any parameters as they see fit, all on their own terms.
Native TIA Interop Today, ZK-Interop Tomorrow
Celestia’s Hyperlane integration begins by bringing native TIA beyond the Cosmos. This is a critical first step towards Lazybridging, Celestia’s long-term vision for a seamless user experience across all Celestia chains.
While in its final form Lazybridging will use ZK-based verification, getting there takes time. In the meantime, Celestia still needs a way to bring native TIA to new ecosystems - that’s where Hyperlane comes in.
With Hyperlane’s modular design, developers can customize and swap out their crosschain security as needed - think building with security legos. Developers can choose from pre-built modules or build their own from scratch, and swap them out easily as needs evolve. For Celestia, this means full control over how incoming messages from external chains are verified.
This flexibility enables Celestia to tailor its security to its current needs, while remaining future-proof. Implementing a new security model is as simple as specifying a new Interchain Security Module (ISM). So when Celestia is ready to transition to ZK-based Lazybridging, it won’t need to replace its entire interop stack — just simply swap in a new module.
TLDR: With Hyperlane, Celestia gets a future-proof interop solution that works today and can easily evolve with its roadmap.
Under the Hood: How It All Works
To bring native TIA to new chains, Celestia core devs integrated the Hyperlane Cosmos SDK module - a 1:1 implementation of Hyperlane tailored for Cosmos chains. Think of modules as building blocks - they’re chunks of code that add specific features for chains built on the Cosmos SDK. With the Hyperlane Cosmos SDK module, Celestia now has a building block to connect to chains and ecosystems beyond Cosmos - starting with the EVM and SVM.
Celestia is adopting Hyperlane’s Collateral → Synthetic Warp Route architecture, which consists of:
- A collateral TIA contract on Celestia, where native TIA is locked.
- A Synthetic TIA contract on each respective destination chains (Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum One, Base, Eclipse, and Abstract), which mint TIA backed by the native TIA locked on Celestia.
What’s Next?
Native TIA Warp Routes are currently in testnet, and will be coming to mainnet over the next few weeks.
Native TIA expansion marks a critical step towards achieving Celestia’s long-term vision for interop - a seamless user experience across all Celestia chains. With Hyperlane, Celestia will now be able to support new chains, refine its security - all on its own terms. What’s more, simply by deploying and using TIA Warp Routes, Celestia and TIA bridgers will be eligible for Expansion Rewards, distributed proportional to the messaging activity they generate for Hyperlane.
Stay tuned. Mainnet soon.
Interested in building with the Hyperlane Cosmos SDK module?
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Expansion.
About Hyperlane
Hyperlane is an open framework for interoperability. It is the toolkit empowering developers to connect any chain and build applications that can easily and securely communicate between multiple blockchains.
