Celestia airdropTIA

What qualified participants did

1. Held at least $50 of activity on one of the top 10 Ethereum rollups by TVL on L2Beat, with allocation scaled by an activity score.
2. Staked at least $75 on Cosmos Hub or Osmosis, or relayed IBC packets, with allocation scaled by stake and activity.
3. Contributed to public GitHub repositories for Ethereum, Bitcoin, rollup or Cosmos infrastructure, or to Celestia core repositories.
4. Posted on the Ethereum Research forum before 5 July 2023 and verified the account through GitHub.
5. Checked and claimed only at genesis.celestia.org before 17 October 2023 (12:00 UTC).

Where things stand

The Celestia Genesis Drop is finished. The official announcement set the claim deadline at 17 October 2023, 12:00 UTC, with a separate GitHub verification step for Ethereum Research forum users due two days earlier. Celestia Mainnet Beta went live on 31 October 2023 at 14:00 UTC, after the claim period had closed.

The drop distributed 60 million TIA, which the post puts at 6% of supply, to 7,579 developers and 576,653 onchain addresses on Ethereum rollups, Cosmos Hub and Osmosis. We found no official announcement of a second Genesis Drop. Any page that offers a new Celestia airdrop should be treated as unverified unless it links to blog.celestia.org or the official foundation channels.

The claim page stated that users in the United States and other prohibited jurisdictions could not claim, and that Celestia Labs team members and advisors were excluded from the developer categories.

How eligibility worked

The allocation was divided into several pools. Research and public goods received 6,000,000 TIA, with 4,600,000 for contributors to Ethereum, Bitcoin, rollup and Cosmos infrastructure and Celestia repositories, and 1,400,000 for Ethereum Research forum participants who posted before 5 July 2023. The early modular ecosystem pool of 8,350,000 TIA covered GitHub contributors to organizations at the first two Modular Summits and in Celestia July 2023 ecosystem map, plus the first Modular Fellows cohort.

Two larger pools were for users. Early adopters of Ethereum rollups received 20,000,000 TIA: active users of the top 10 rollups by TVL on L2Beat who held at least $50, ranked by an activity score into top 10%, top 20% and top 50% tiers. Cosmos Hub and Osmosis stakers and IBC relayers received another 20,000,000 TIA, with stakers needing at least $75 and ranked by stake multiplied by activity score, and 1,500,000 TIA reserved for relayers. An additional 5,650,000 TIA went to GitHub super-contributors: 4,000,000 for at least 23 commits and 1,650,000 for at least 4 commits.

The anti-Sybil approach was described in unusual detail. Celestia excluded known Sybil and non-user addresses using blocklists from earlier airdrops, including Hop and Optimism Airdrop 1, and a list from Trusta Labs, which also ran clustering and asset-transfer-graph analysis. It also excluded exchange addresses labelled by Numia and addresses linked to exploits. Allocations were weighted by an activity score so that real usage earned more than minimal activity.

• Research and public goods: 6,000,000 TIA.
• Early modular ecosystem: 8,350,000 TIA.
• Early Ethereum rollup adopters: 20,000,000 TIA.
• Cosmos Hub and Osmosis stakers and IBC relayers: 20,000,000 TIA.
• GitHub super-contributors: 5,650,000 TIA additional.

Security notes

Celestia said that genesis.celestia.org was the only place to check eligibility or claim, and that Celestia Labs and the Celestia Foundation would never ask for a seed phrase or private key, contact people first about the drop, or ask them to send tokens. It also said TIA was not distributed through Twitter giveaways. Any message that breaks those rules was not from the project.

Because the drop ended in 2023, a current offer to "claim your Celestia airdrop" is almost certainly a phishing attempt. Do not connect a wallet to a page you reached from a message, and verify addresses from the official blog.

What to take from this drop

Celestia ran one of the better-documented retroactive drops, with published pools, thresholds and exclusion rules. The activity score meant that holding the minimum balance was only a first step, because the amount depended on how much real use an address showed. That is useful context for evaluating other drops that publish tiers.

The drop also targeted people outside crypto-native trading, such as open-source contributors and researchers, who qualified through GitHub and forum activity. Anyone following later programs should look for the same signals, a stated snapshot date and a named official site, and be cautious when those are missing.