NODO Weekly: Ethereum’s DA Wars, Ordinals’ Revival, and VC’s Shifting Bets

This week, we analyze Ethereum’s declining dominance in data availability as rollups increasingly opt for Celestia over Ethereum blobs. 

We also examine the resurgence of Bitcoin Ordinals—are they back for good or just another cycle of hype? Lastly, we break down February’s VC funding trends, which saw a decline in deal sizes but continued strong interest in DeFi and AI despite market corrections. Let’s dive in.

1. Data Availability Wars

Ethereum is scaling through rollups, positioning itself as the Data Availability (DA) layer for these rollups. They can post data to Ethereum’s L1 via calldata or blobs—a specialized fee market designed for rollups that reduces costs by up to 90% compared to calldata.

In this role, Ethereum indirectly competes with Celestia and other alternative DA layers. One way to assess whether the rollup-centric roadmap is working is to track where rollups are posting their data. Are they using calldata, blobs, or an alt DA layer?

Since blobs are more cost-efficient, they are the natural choice over calldata—but the key question now is how many rollups are choosing blobs over third-party DA solutions.

Over the past 90 days, Ethereum’s blob usage has dropped from 71% to just 8.84%, while Celestia’s share has surged from 29% to 91%, becoming the dominant data availability layer.

• Polygon’s Avail briefly peaked at 5% market share but has since dwindled to just 0.25%.

• Currently, most rollups are posting their data to Celestia. In the last 24 hours:

• 26.85 GiB of data was posted to Celestia vs. 2.61 GiB on Ethereum.

• Ethereum's blobs are at 99% capacity, averaging 0.03094 MiB/s throughput, while Celestia operates at just 23.87% capacity with 0.31822 MiB/s throughput—over 10x Ethereum’s blobs.

• Celestia’s max throughput is 1.33333 MiB/s, 42x higher than Ethereum’s 0.03125 MiB/s limit.

• Celestia offers 6-second finality, 120x faster than Ethereum’s 12-minute finality.

• Celestia is also 99%+ cheaper per MB than blobs, making it 50x more cost-efficient.

With lower costs, faster finality, and significantly higher capacity, Celestia is rapidly emerging as the preferred DA layer for rollups.

It’s no surprise that the majority of rollups are now posting data on Celestia instead of Ethereum blobs.

Eclipse leads the pack, accounting for 98.19% of all data posted to Celestia in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, on Ethereum blobs, Base is the dominant contributor, holding a 35.14% market share.

2. Ordinals Resurgence

Ordinals are making a comeback. After their initial hype two years ago, Ordinals seem to be regaining traction.

If you’re unfamiliar, Ordinals allow data—such as images, text, or code—to be inscribed directly onto individual satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin). This effectively enables NFTs and other digital collectibles on Bitcoin without needing a separate token or sidechain. The system leverages Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade, ensuring inscriptions are immutable and fully on-chain.

For those curious, you can read more about them here.

Last month, Ordinals saw 4.1 million transactions, generating $2.6 million in related fees. While this is a significant uptick, it’s still far from the December 2023 peak of $90 million in fees.

3. VC Deals 

Let’s take a temperature check on VC funding in February—and it’s showing a slight dip compared to January.

Last month, $1.11 billion was raised across 137 companies, down from $1.57 billion across 132 companies in January, according to TIE Terminal data. Looks like there was less capital to go around in February.

DeFi continued to lead the pack, with 20 companies securing $175 million in funding. This trend is notable, as DeFi also dominated January, when 21 companies raised $339 million—a strong signal of investor interest in the sector.

Coming in second place after DeFi last month was AI—both an expected and unexpected result.

It’s not surprising, given that AI remains a major investment theme across industries, including crypto. But it’s also surprising because the AI sector in crypto took a beating last month, with valuations dropping an average of 60% across the board.

Still, it's refreshing to see that VCs aren’t deterred by price action and are continuing to bet on AI within crypto. Maybe they see something we don’t.

Meanwhile, modular blockchains and token issuers saw the least funding activity in terms of the number of deals.

There’s been a noticeable decline in deal sizes so far this year. But with just three months in, it might be too early to call this a definitive trend or something to worry about.

The average deal size has dropped from $35M in December to $9M last month. Still, we’ve seen big raises, with Phantom securing $150M and Movement Labs raising $100M—proving that capital is still flowing, just more selectively.

Written by Pascal Abams — Research Analyst at NODO. I research on-chain trends, market narratives, and investment opportunities in crypto. If you have thoughts, insights, or just want to connect—reach out.

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Disclaimer

This newsletter is for informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice. Crypto investments carry high risk; always conduct thorough research.

Here’s to a groundbreaking 2025🧡
The NODO Team

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