Share this article
Avail, Data Availability Solution to Rival Celestia, Unveils 'Incentivized Testnet'
The announcement comes as Celestia's recent launch and airdrop has kindled interest in "modular" blockchain projects that can relieve the burden on primary networks like Ethereum.
Updated Apr 9, 2024, 11:01 p.m. Published Nov 7, 2023, 4:00 p.m.
Avail, a modular blockchain "data availability" solution to rival the recently launched Celestia, said a new test network will come with incentives for validators and other operators to try to find flaws in the underlying programming.
The project is "inviting validators and light client operators – the titans who guard Avail’s network – to test, validate and operate, helping us battle-test our code base, refine our infrastructure, vet our operational readiness," according to a press release.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
In blockchain terminology, a "light client" is software application that allows users to interact with the network without having to download the entire blockchain data – so it can be done on smaller devices with less memory and computational power.
These light clients are a key user segment for data availability solutions like Avail and Celestia, which aim to relieve primary blockchain networks like Ethereum of the extra load of having to constantly field queries for data on historical transactions. That task is expected to grow more burdensome as Ethereum's network of affiliated "layer-2" networks expands, ostensibly producing reams of data that need to be stored and accessed.
Avail, spun out of Polygon in March and led by Polygon co-founder Anurag Arjun, has released test networks this year in anticipation of its main launch, expected in early 2024.
The new incentive program marks "a significant stride toward Mainnet," the company said.
Under Avail's new "gamified" incentive plan, called "Clash of Nodes," participants can earn rewards from completing quests. Those include consistently and correctly validating the chain, helping to simulate "disaster scenarios," authoring as many blocks as possible and staking, Avail said.
The goal is to encourage users and developers to "test every angle" and try to “break the network” by sending vast amounts of data, according to the press release.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Solana’s Drift Launches v3, With 10x Faster Trades
With v3, the team says that about 85% of market orders will fill in under half a second, and liquidity will deepen enough to bring slippage on larger trades down to around 0.02%.
What to know:
- Drift, one of the largest perpetuals trading platforms on Solana, has launched Drift v3, a major upgrade meant to make on-chain trading feel as fast and smooth as using a centralized exchange.
- The new version will deliver 10-times faster trade execution thanks to a rebuilt backend, marking the largest performance jump the project has made so far.
Top Stories
