Celestia Mainnet Snapshot

Restore-verified on 2026-09-27. This archive was restored end to end on a throwaway node: it reached the chain tip, ran 371 blocks past the snapshot height with catching_up=false, and logged no app-hash divergence. That test exists because the previous pipeline pruned the copy offline with cosmprund, which rewrote the application state and produced an archive that stalled a restored node with APP HASH MISMATCH at height 14443346. The publisher no longer rewrites anything: the archive is a copy of the node's own pruned data.

POSTHUMAN provides a pruned Celestia consensus-node snapshot for chain ID celestia.

• DB backend: PebbleDB
• Publication cadence: every four hours. Read snapshot_time from snapshot.json rather than assuming freshness.
• Archive format: snapshot-latest.tar.lz4; read snapshot_size_bytes from snapshot.json before download because its size changes with the source data.
• Resumable: yes. The host answers byte-range requests, so an interrupted download continues instead of starting over.
• Restore-verified: yes, 2026-09-27, at height 14445450. See the notice above for what the test actually proved.
• Node parameters behind it: pruning = custom / keep-recent = 100 / interval = 19, min-retain-blocks = 300000 (about ten days of blocks), indexer = null, PebbleDB. The archive inherits exactly those, so it is not an archive node and carries no transaction index.

Snapshot Endpoint

• Index: https://snapshots-celestia-mainnet.posthuman.digital/
• Metadata: https://snapshots-celestia-mainnet.posthuman.digital/snapshot.json
• Snapshot file: https://snapshots-celestia-mainnet.posthuman.digital/snapshot-latest.tar.lz4
• Genesis: https://snapshots-celestia-mainnet.posthuman.digital/genesis.json
• Addrbook: https://snapshots-celestia-mainnet.posthuman.digital/addrbook.json

The snapshot contains the data/ directory and is extracted directly into $HOME/.celestia-app. Configure both CometBFT and app DB backends as PebbleDB before starting from this snapshot.

An alternative source

Our archive is rebuilt every four hours, so it can be a few hours old. ITRocket publishes a PebbleDB Celestia snapshot with the same node parameters and a machine-readable index; measured on 2026-09-27 at height 14439541, 3.0 GiB, HEAD 200, range 206. POSTHUMAN restored its own node from that provider twice in September, so it is a route we have walked rather than a link we found.

It is somebody else's artifact: confirm the height against a live RPC, keep priv_validator_key.json and priv_validator_state.json out of the extraction, and stop the node only after the download and decompression have succeeded.

Preflight

Always compare snapshot metadata with a trusted live RPC before restore:

# The candidate you are about to restore, from the source named above.
curl -fsS https://server-1.itrocket.net/mainnet/celestia/.current_state.json | jq .

# Two independent views of the live chain: ours and somebody else's.
curl -fsS https://rpc-celestia-mainnet.posthuman.digital/status | \
  jq -r '.result.node_info.network, .result.sync_info.latest_block_height, .result.sync_info.catching_up'
curl -fsS https://celestia-rpc.publicnode.com/status | \
  jq -r '.result.sync_info.latest_block_height'

Stop if:

• chain_id is not celestia;
• metadata height is far ahead of or inconsistent with trusted RPC height;
• snapshot file size is unexpectedly small;
• you cannot preserve keys and validator state.

Quick Restore

Requires aria2, jq and lz4:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y aria2 jq lz4

export CELESTIA_HOME="$HOME/.celestia-app"
export SERVICE_NAME="celestia-appd"
export SNAP_DIR="$HOME/celestia-mainnet-snapshot-restore"

# Download and validate before stopping the node. Fetched to disk rather than
# piped into tar, so a dropped connection resumes and the archive is proven
# before anything touches live data.
rm -rf "$SNAP_DIR"
install -d -m 0700 "$SNAP_DIR"

SNAP_BASE="https://snapshots-celestia-mainnet.posthuman.digital"
curl -fsS "$SNAP_BASE/snapshot.json" -o "$SNAP_DIR/snapshot.json"
EXPECTED_SHA256="$(jq -er '.snapshot_sha256' "$SNAP_DIR/snapshot.json")"
EXPECTED_SIZE="$(jq -er '.snapshot_size_bytes' "$SNAP_DIR/snapshot.json")"
jq -er '.chain_id == "celestia"' "$SNAP_DIR/snapshot.json"

aria2c --continue=true --max-connection-per-server=8 --split=8 \
  --min-split-size=64M --file-allocation=none \
  --dir="$SNAP_DIR" --out=snapshot-latest.tar.lz4 \
  "$SNAP_BASE/snapshot-latest.tar.lz4"

test "$(stat -c %s "$SNAP_DIR/snapshot-latest.tar.lz4")" = "$EXPECTED_SIZE"
printf '%s  %s\n' "$EXPECTED_SHA256" "$SNAP_DIR/snapshot-latest.tar.lz4" | \
  sha256sum --check --strict
lz4 -t "$SNAP_DIR/snapshot-latest.tar.lz4"

lz4 -dc "$SNAP_DIR/snapshot-latest.tar.lz4" | tar -xf - -C "$SNAP_DIR"
test -d "$SNAP_DIR/data/application.db"

cp "$CELESTIA_HOME/data/priv_validator_state.json" \
   "$CELESTIA_HOME/priv_validator_state.json.backup" 2>/dev/null || true

sudo systemctl stop "$SERVICE_NAME"
BACKUP_DIR="$CELESTIA_HOME/data.before-snapshot-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)"
if [ -d "$CELESTIA_HOME/data" ]; then
  mv "$CELESTIA_HOME/data" "$BACKUP_DIR"
fi
mv "$SNAP_DIR/data" "$CELESTIA_HOME/data"

sed -i -e 's|^db_backend *=.*|db_backend = "pebbledb"|' \
  "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/config.toml"

if grep -q '^app-db-backend' "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/app.toml"; then
  sed -i 's|^app-db-backend *=.*|app-db-backend = "pebbledb"|' \
    "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/app.toml"
else
  printf '\napp-db-backend = "pebbledb"\n' >> "$CELESTIA_HOME/config/app.toml"
fi

if [ -f "$CELESTIA_HOME/priv_validator_state.json.backup" ]; then
  mv "$CELESTIA_HOME/priv_validator_state.json.backup" \
     "$CELESTIA_HOME/data/priv_validator_state.json"
fi

sudo systemctl start "$SERVICE_NAME"
journalctl -u "$SERVICE_NAME" -f

Verify

curl -fsS http://127.0.0.1:26657/status | jq -r '
  .result.node_info.network,
  .result.sync_info.latest_block_height,
  .result.sync_info.latest_block_time,
  .result.sync_info.catching_up'

The node is recovered when chain ID is celestia, block time is fresh, height advances, and catching_up=false.

Important Boundary

This is a consensus-node snapshot for celestia-appd. It is not a celestia-node bridge/full/light node-store snapshot. Do not extract it into ~/.celestia-bridge, ~/.celestia-full, or ~/.celestia-light.