New York, NY — July 15, 2026 — Celestia Labs, the core engineering team behind the modular Layer 1 blockchain Celestia, announced today the acquisition of Sovereign Labs. The deal brings together technology and talent from both companies, positioning Celestia Labs as a full-stack custom blockchain development partner for enterprises seeking high performance, scalability, and customization.
Sovereign Labs has been a foundational part of the Celestia ecosystem since its founding in 2021 by Cem Ozer and Preston Evans. Its Sovereign SDK has become the industry’s leading framework for building application-specific, high-performance blockchains. The SDK powers major applications such as Relay — the top bridge by volume, handling over $8.5 billion in transfers — and Bullet, a perpetuals exchange that clears orders in 1.2 milliseconds and processes more than 30,000 transactions per second.
Combined, the two teams have shipped over 25 production blockchains. As part of the acquisition, six Sovereign Labs team members join Celestia Labs, and co-founder Preston Evans has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer. Evans commented: “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 as demand for custom blockchains surges. General-purpose chains often cannot provide the scale, latency, and custom order flow rules needed for next-generation applications. For example, Hyperliquid built its own blockchain to achieve low latency, and Polymarket — which processed $6 billion in volume in the first half of 2025 — is migrating to a custom chain to solve congestion issues. Celestia Labs aims to fill the gap as a design and engineering partner for such projects.
Nick White, CEO of Celestia Labs, stated: “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.”
About the Celestia Foundation
The Celestia Foundation is a non-profit organization supporting the long-term development, governance, and ecosystem of the Celestia network, led by CEO and Co-founder Mustafa Al-Bassam.
About Celestia Labs
Celestia Labs is the core engineering team building and maintaining the Celestia network. The team has shipped over 25 custom chains into production, built the industry’s leading framework for high-performance blockchains, and raised over $155 million from Bain Capital Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, and others. For more information, visit celestia.org.