TIA

TIA serves four concrete functions: 1) Payment for data storage (blobspace) required by all rollups building on Celestia; 2) Gas token for new rollups to bootstrap without issuing new tokens; 3) Staking to secure the consensus layer with inflationary rewards; 4) Governance participation including parameter voting and community fund control. This creates multifaceted demand drivers anchored in network usage and security rather than pure speculation.

Staking involves delegating TIA to validators (capped at 100) who process transactions. Delegators earn proportional rewards minus validator commissions. Key risks include slashing for validator misbehavior, inflation dilution starting at 8% annually, and validator technical failures. Importantly, redelegation allows switching validators without unbonding periods, mitigating some risks. Rewards decrease annually with inflation until stabilizing at 1.5%, creating predictable long-term economics.

DAS enables resource-efficient verification where light nodes sample random block segments rather than downloading entire blocks. Mathematically, sampling sufficient shares guarantees entire block availability with high probability. This creates a security advantage: as more light nodes join, the network can handle larger blocks while maintaining verification accessibility. Crucially, this scales security with participation rather than concentrating it among few full nodes.

Developers deploy sovereign rollups using frameworks like Rollkit (Cosmos) or Optimint (Optimistic). These rollups post transaction data to Celestia via PayForBlobs transactions, leveraging Celestia's consensus while maintaining execution autonomy. Tools include Celestia Node API for data posting, Celestia Scan for exploration, and Blobstream for Ethereum attestations. Crucially, developers can launch without new tokens by using TIA for gas and economic security during bootstrapping.