With the Ginger upgrade on the horizon, Celestia is taking a major step forward in its mission to scale decentralized data availability. Building on the Lemongrass upgrade from September, Ginger represents Celestia’s second significant update and is set to go live on Mainnet Beta in December.
This upgrade introduces a twofold increase in data throughput by reducing block times from 12 seconds to 6 seconds, delivering faster transactions and a better user experience.
Beyond these immediate gains, Ginger provides a foundation for future scalability, enabling the community to increase block sizes up to 8 megabytes every 6 seconds.
Doubling Data Availability with Ginger
The Ginger upgrade, or celestia-app v3, is already being called “The Doubling” because it instantly doubles data availability by halving block times. By processing data twice as fast, Celestia can improve transaction speeds and bring users faster finality.
This also opens up pathways for future scaling, as community governance will have the ability to increase block sizes up to 8 MB every 6 seconds, allowing Celestia to handle up to 1.33 MB of data per second.
Ginger is set to launch first on the Arabica testnet in early November, followed by Mocha testnet, and then Mainnet Beta in December.
Key Innovations Driving the Ginger Upgrade
The Ginger upgrade includes several Celestia Improvement Proposals (CIPs) that introduce important changes to consensus and performance. Together, these updates are designed to support faster throughput and streamline data handling.
CIP-21: Authored Blobs with Verified Signers
CIP-21 introduces “authored blobs,” adding signer verification directly within blob metadata. This enables Celestia validators to confirm that the blob’s signer matches the one who paid for it, simplifying verification for rollups and improving data handling.
CIP-24: Versioned Gas Scheduler Variables
CIP-24 stabilizes transaction costs by setting certain gas variables, like GasPerBlobByte, to be adjustable only through network upgrades. This makes transaction costs more predictable, so developers can calculate fees offline without needing to constantly check the network.
CIP-26: Versioned Timeouts
Under CIP-26, block times are reduced from 12 seconds to 6, which doubles data throughput and cuts down on transaction wait times. This change aligns block timing with the application version, allowing for more adaptable upgrades. To support the quicker block times, transaction lifespans have also been adjusted to keep processing efficient.
CIP-27: Block Limits for Transaction Types
CIP-27 sets block limits for different transaction types, specifically capping PayForBlobs (PFBs) at 600 and non-PFB messages at 200 per block. These limits help manage transaction volume and keep block processing fast, ensuring efficient transaction verification.
CIP-28: Transaction Size Limit
To address potential network strain, CIP-28 caps individual transaction size at 2MB across all processing stages, especially relevant as block sizes grow. The rationale is to prevent issues with gossiping large transactions, even with 8 MiB blocks and larger. It also leaves the door open for decreasing the block time and increasing the block size, to increase throughput, in the future.
BBR by Default
In addition to its core updates, the Ginger upgrade introduces BBR (Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time), a sophisticated approach to managing data flow that addresses key challenges in network congestion. Traditional congestion control methods slow data transfer whenever packet loss is detected, which can significantly reduce network efficiency, especially over long distances. This approach poses unique challenges in decentralized networks, where nodes often prioritize keeping pace with new blocks, resulting in delayed data getting left behind.
BBR offers a more efficient solution by measuring the round-trip time of data rather than relying on packet loss as an indicator. This allows data to move consistently and quickly across the network, even in widely distributed and complex systems.
For more details, consult the Ginger upgrade documentation.
——————————————————
About Stakecito Labs
At Stakecito Labs, we've honed our craft as validators. Our reputation as the third-largest validator by delegation count within the Cosmos ecosystem speaks to our unwavering dedication and the trust placed in us by over 270,000 delegators worldwide.
Our validation services are not just about maintaining Cosmos blockchain networks though; we validate networks outside of Cosmos as well (NEAR, Aleph Zero, etc.).
Our core mission is centered on demystifying blockchain technology to ensure it's accessible for everyone, from newcomers to seasoned investors. To begin staking, visit our homepage.
Stake with Stakecito | Follow us on Twitter | Subscribe to Our YouTube | Governance
——————————————————
