Celestia Labs Acquires Sovereign Labs to Build High-Performance Custom Blockchains
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The acquisition brings key talent on board, promotes Sovereign Labs Co-founder Preston Evans to CTO, and establishes Celestia Labs as a full-stack custom blockchain development partner for enterprises.
New York, NY — 15 July, 2026 – Celestia Labs, developer of the leading modular Layer 1 blockchain Celestia, today announced it is bringing on the technology and talent behind Sovereign Labs. This acquisition expands Celestia Labs’ expertise to span the full stack of blockchain engineering, from Layer 1 through the execution and application layers — enabling end-to-end development for peak scale, performance and customisation.
Sovereign Labs has been a core pillar of the Celestia ecosystem since its founding in 2021 by Cem Ozer and Preston Evans. Now in 2026, the Sovereign SDK is the industry’s leading framework for application-specific, high-performance blockchains. It powers applications like Relay, the #1 bridge by volume, powering over $8.5B of transfers, and Bullet, a perpetual exchange capable of clearing orders in 1.2 milliseconds and processing over 30,000 TPS.
Together, the teams behind both groups have shipped more than 25 production blockchains and built the industry’s leading framework for high-performance blockchains. As part of the acquisition, 6 team members join Celestia Labs including Sovereign Labs Co-founder Preston Evans who has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer.
 
“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.” — Preston Evans, Chief Technology Officer, Celestia Labs
The market is already seeing an increase in demand for custom blockchains because existing general-purpose chains can’t offer the scale and performance necessary for the next generation of applications. Hyperliquid, the leading decentralized exchange, built its own blockchain to optimize for low latency and custom order flow rules. Polymarket, the prediction market that processed $6B in volume in H1 2025, is migrating to a custom chain to resolve congestion issues. As more applications run up against the constraints of existing blockchain infrastructure, they will need a design and engineering partner to build the solutions they need.
“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.”— Nick White, CEO, Celestia Labs.
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 collectively shipped more than 25 custom chains into production, built the industry’s leading framework for high-performance blockchains, and raised over $155M from Bain Capital Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, and others.
Website: https://celestia.org
Media contact: Jon “Sandy” Sanderson — sandy@celestia.org
Nick White and Preston Evans are available for interview.
