Celestia Labs, the core development team behind the modular Layer 1 blockchain Celestia, has announced the acquisition of Sovereign Labs, bringing on both its technology and personnel. The move is designed to expand Celestia Labs' capabilities across the full blockchain stack—from Layer 1 through execution and application layers—allowing it to deliver end-to-end solutions for peak scale, performance, and customization.
Sovereign Labs, founded in 2021 by Cem Ozer and Preston Evans, has been a foundational part of the Celestia ecosystem. Its Sovereign SDK has become the industry's leading framework for building application-specific, high-performance blockchains. The SDK powers notable applications such as Relay, the top bridge by volume with over $8.5 billion in transfers, and Bullet, a perpetuals exchange that clears orders in 1.2 milliseconds and processes over 30,000 transactions per second.
Together, the combined teams have shipped more than 25 production blockchains, demonstrating deep expertise in blockchain engineering. As part of the acquisition, six team members join Celestia Labs, including Sovereign Labs co-founder Preston Evans, who has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer. Evans stated, “Companies migrating onchain can’t build in-house what Celestia Labs’ team and tech offers, in terms of reliability or scale. I’m excited to keep building on the legacy Celestia Labs has created, and push the boundaries of blockchain infrastructure engineering to meet the demands of the next era of onchain applications.”
The acquisition comes amid rising demand for custom blockchains, as general-purpose chains struggle to provide the scale and performance required by next-generation applications. For instance, Hyperliquid, a leading decentralized exchange, built its own blockchain to optimize for low latency and custom order flow rules. Similarly, Polymarket, a prediction market that processed $6 billion in volume in the first half of 2025, is migrating to a custom chain to address congestion issues.
Nick White, CEO of Celestia Labs, emphasized the strategic importance of the acquisition: “Internet-scale applications, from agentic payments solutions to global exchanges and prediction markets, require custom infrastructure that only a highly experienced implementation team can provide. The newly combined expertise and technology from this acquisition position Celestia Labs as a full-stack infrastructure and design partner for companies that need their own blockchains.”
The Celestia Foundation, a non-profit supporting the Celestia network, oversees the long-term development and governance of the ecosystem. Celestia Labs, as the core engineering team, has raised over $155 million from investors including Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures. This acquisition further solidifies its position as a key player in the modular blockchain space, enabling it to meet the growing demand for custom, high-performance blockchain solutions.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
