Pledge revolution or shipment cover? Celestia's PoG proposal and the mystery of cashing out billions of yuan

TIA, the "staking shovel" that no one cares about now, has once again faced a community opinion crisis. During this period of long-term price declines and the gradual marginalization of narratives, Celestia's network revenue continued to be sluggish and the feasibility of the DA track also encountered challenges. Against this background, its co-founder John Adler proposed a subversive governance proposal.

Canceling staking, Celestia wants to revolutionize POS

Co-founder John Adler recently proposed a disruptive governance proposal, advocating that the network should completely abandon the current Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism and adopt the "Proof-of-Governance (PoG)" model. Once this proposal was proposed, it sparked heated discussions in the crypto community and directly pointed to the core concept of blockchain governance structure.

If the plan is adopted, the Celestia network will undergo a series of structural reconstructions: First, the issuance of TIA tokens will be reduced by about 20 times, greatly compressing circulation inflation, and the corresponding reduction ratio will be as high as 95%. Secondly, the existing entrusted staking and liquidity staking contracts will be completely abolished, and the on-chain governance mechanism will be terminated simultaneously.

All new TIA issuance will be paid to validators as off-chain incentives for running nodes; validators will no longer be elected through token voting, but will be determined through an off-chain governance mechanism. In addition, Celestia will adopt a fee destruction mechanism to give back to coin holders, and the daily protocol income of approximately US$100 to US$300 will be directly used to support the value of TIA.

Adler even advocates the complete removal of the concept of "staking". He believes that when there are no more token issuance rewards and no reliance on staking voting to select validators, the act of "staking" becomes redundant, LST also loses its basis for existence, and TIA itself becomes a direct carrier of value capture.

Adler's proposal is essentially intended to address the inflationary pressure of TIA prices that has been on a long-term downward trend, and to inject basic logic into the long-term value of the network by building a scarcer and more compact token economic model.

But at the same time, the proposal also challenges several assumptions that are taken for granted in the mainstream consensus of Ethereum, such as whether the economic security of the blockchain really relies on the penalty mechanism (slashing), whether PoS is actually a permissioned "authority proof" mechanism (a variant of PoA), and whether the blockchain system can operate sustainably through a "governance-free profit model". If this proposal is adopted, it will not only reconstruct Celestia's economic model, but may also challenge the current pledge governance logic dominated by Ethereum.

 Source: Blockworks Research.

However, just as this governance proposal aimed at "rebuilding the foundation of the token economy" has not yet been implemented, the community has repeatedly exposed the Celestia team's large-scale cashing behavior, which has led to divergent interpretations of the original intention of the proposal. On the one hand, the project party emphasized that the PoG model is expected to curb inflation, repair the token model and restore market confidence; but on the other hand, on-chain data showed that many core team members quickly completed large-scale cashing operations after the unlocking window was opened, with a cumulative cashing of more than 100 million US dollars, which aroused market doubts.

Is this deflationary reform for the long-term value of TIA, or is it a system cover-up after the team "shipped at a high price"? With TIA falling by 92% and user trust continuing to erode, Celestia's "modular vision" is facing an unprecedented crisis of trust.

Shipping is the key?

Community user @0xCircusLover’s tweet accused the Celestia core team of serious opacity in multiple aspects such as token unlocking, fund operation, and market promotion. This revelation was described by some observers as an exposure of Celestia’s “criminal pattern”, triggering strong market doubts about the project’s internal governance and ethics.

According to its disclosure, Celestia executives had completed the unlocking of TIA tokens as early as early October 2024, and the unlocking of team members was launched shortly thereafter. In the following months, several key figures were exposed to have realized large amounts of cash through over-the-counter transactions or resource swaps. For example, Mustafa, the co-founder of the project, was accused of cashing out more than $25 million through OTC channels and has moved to Dubai. Another key figure, Andy, was accused of accepting remuneration to promote TIA, while Yaz was fired and withdrew from the cryptocurrency circle due to allegations of sexual harassment. The user claimed to have information about the relevant victims and evidence of the transaction, and planned to publish the complete materials in the near future.

In addition, he also mentioned that Celestia had paid seven figures of US dollars to the well-known organization Abstract in exchange for its "separation" from its competitor Eigen partnership, and paid media people Jon Charb and Bankless to maintain a positive image of the project. This series of money operations was accused by the whistleblower as a typical operation of "paid publicity."

Another focus of the controversy is on the role of Bankless anchor David. The community questioned that he frequently spoke out for TIA, but had no actual experience in using Celestia data availability services or building protocols. Instead, he was inconsistent in many public speeches about whether he held TIA tokens, which aroused widespread doubts about the fairness of his speech.

Although the revelation has not yet been officially responded to, it has already caused a crisis of trust in some circles, especially the further amplification effect of TIA's current market price pressure and employees' continuous selling. Celestia once became popular with the narrative of "modular data availability", but now, the series of questions surrounding its core team governance, public opinion manipulation and capital flow are causing this once highly anticipated project to fall into an unprecedented public relations crisis.

“There’s evidence all over the crypto world, but no one wants to talk about it publicly because ‘they’re too big.’”

Previously, crypto KOL Mosi gave a Celestia internal team token distribution and cash-out data table, showing that team members have sold a total of about 9.43 million TIAs, and the cumulative cash-out amount is estimated to be as high as $109 million based on the market price at the time. These tokens are all classified as "Team" and belong to early core members and contributors.

The largest selling address is celestia1erglsz..., which has sold 2,609,516.29 TIA, corresponding to 27,368,523.82 USD in cash. The selling amount of multiple addresses is over one million USD, indicating that the team actively cashed out at the early stage of token unlocking.

Under this tweet, a user quoted Celestia COO Nick White's remarks to mock him, "I have never sold a TIA," which echoes the $100 million in the picture above.

Last October, Celestia announced that it had "completed $100 million in financing" on the eve of a major unlocking event, which once triggered the community's optimistic expectations of its financial strength. However, according to crypto investor Sisyphus, the financing was actually an over-the-counter transaction that had been completed several months ago, and the tokens involved will be unlocked in October. This behavior is regarded by some community members as a typical information manipulation: "First, sell off-market, then package it as a positive, and finally guide retail investors to take over before the unlocking window."

Although Celestia's current valuation is marked as $3.5 billion by the outside world, its actual revenue is far from supporting such an inflated valuation. According to public data, Celestia's average daily contract revenue is less than $100, and its annualized potential is only around $5 million. Industry insiders generally point out that Celestia's market pricing is more like a premium advance on "future narratives" rather than being based on existing usage data or business models. For this reason, once market sentiment turns cold, its valuation bubble is very likely to be squeezed.

In the face of various accusations and public opinion storms surrounding Celestia, the founder of Celestia publicly stated that although the current market is full of "increasingly outrageous FUD, all founding members, early employees and core engineers are still on the job. He also revealed that Celestia currently has more than $100 million in cash reserves and sufficient cash flow to support operations for more than 6 years.

"To survive in this industry, every project has to go through ups and downs. Almost all tokens will experience a 95% plunge in their life cycle. This is the norm rather than the exception," Mustafa wrote in a tweet. Now, TIA has fallen 92% from its high point.