Celestia co-founder Mustafa Al-Bassam has claimed that the crew stays dedicated and financially geared up to climate the storm regardless of escalating accusations of misconduct, insider profit-taking and neighborhood distrust.
“Regardless of the FUD (which is getting extra ridiculous by the day), all Celestia founders, early staff and core engineers are nonetheless right here and dealing as onerous as we did when Celestia began 5 years in the past,” Al-Bassam wrote in a Monday publish on X.
Al-Bassam claimed that main token drawdowns are a traditional a part of the trade. He added that Celestia (TIA) has sturdy long-term viability, citing a “$100M+ struggle chest and a 6+ 12 months runway.”
The feedback observe rising criticism from tokenholders and impartial researchers who allege the Celestia crew and insiders offloaded giant portions of TIA tokens as retail buyers bore the brunt of the token’s 95% drawdown.
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Insider profit-taking and misconduct
Al-Bassam’s publish seemingly got here in response to a scathing X thread by Startup Anthropologist. The publish, which attracted over 200,000 views, accuses the Celestia crew of coordinated monetary misconduct.
“All c-suite had unlocks in early Oct. 24… Mustafa offered 25M+ in OTC, moved to Dubai,” the publish alleges. The thread additional claims that distinguished figures have been paid to advertise the TIA token whereas staff quietly offloaded holdings.
One other X person, Shrutebuck, criticized the timing of the unlocks. “They rewarded thief early buyers and themselves on the expense of retail, then they cry on the timeline in regards to the ‘ridiculous FUD’ when the token is down 98%.”
Criticism additionally focused Celestia’s token unlock schedule. “Why do you have got a token unlock that lasts 3/4 years?” requested one other X person. “I consider in $ETH and little else… however I don’t consider in those that unlock all my provide in 3 years.”
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Celestia’s market technique underneath scrutiny
The criticism of Celestia just isn’t new. In Could, investor Larry Sukernik described Celestia as a cautionary story in making an attempt to brute-force market traction via narrative and advertising and marketing. He argued that appchains and vertical integration solely succeed with loyal person bases, one thing Celestia could lack at scale.
“The issue was there aren’t sufficient apps with PMF [product-market fit] which might be motivated to vertically combine,” Sukernik wrote, pointing to poor timing in Celestia’s go-to-market push.
On the time, Al-Bassam responded by saying that Celestia was launched earlier than rollups turned central to blockchain scaling, and thus the crew couldn’t have anticipated the “rollup industrial complicated” rising so giant.
He defended the challenge’s relevance, citing over 30 rollups deployed on Celestia and claiming it controls round 50% of the information availability (DA) throughput market. “We’re principally the default answer for alt-DA today,” he wrote.
Regardless of that, Sukernik questioned whether or not Celestia jumped into the DA area prematurely, given the still-nascent demand from rollups. He famous that whereas Celestia has market share, it could not translate into actual financial traction.
On the time of publication, Celestia’s TIA is buying and selling at $1.61, up 14% over the previous day. Nonetheless, the token is down greater than 92% in comparison with its all-time excessive of $20.91, registered in June final 12 months.
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