Celestia’s ‘Matcha’ Upgrade Preps Network for Cross-Chain Future

The project behind the data availability blockchain Celestia rolled out on Monday what it calls its biggest software upgrade yet, dubbed Matcha.

At its core, this update is designed to boost the network’s capacity and improve token economics. Among the technical changes, it increases the maximum block size to 128 MB (up from 8 MB) and changes how data propagation works, enabling much higher throughput.

Simply put, Celestia is preparing itself to handle much more data, which is important if many applications start using it as their underlying “routing” or “data-availability” layer.

Beyond throughput, Matcha upgrade also claims to make significant economic and interoperability improvements. The upgrade cuts annual token inflation from ~5% down to ~2.5%. It also removes a “token filter” for cross-chain bridges, meaning non-TIA assets can more easily be moved through or routed by the Celestia layer. This is meant to signal that Celestia wants to become a go-to layer for cross-chain data availability and asset routing.

The project’s native token, TIA, is roughly up about 6% over the last 24 hours, trading around $0.65. However, the token is still down 97% from its peak of around $19.70 in December 2024.

Read more: From Airdrop to Freefall: Celestia’s Tokenomics Under Fire