Key Insights
CKB’s price declined 58.9% QoQ to $0.0047, while its circulating market capitalization dropped 58.2% to approximately $216.4 million. The token’s market cap rank fell from 150 to 165, partially driven by slowdowns in the broader altcoin market.Average daily transactions on CKB fell 28.6% QoQ to 25,300, and new address creation declined 40.5% to 4,600 per day. Despite this, total unique addresses rose 7.5% to 5.95 million, indicating a continued long-term increase in user adoption.Nervos DAO deposits fell 3.4% QoQ to 7.8 billion CKB, with new deposits decreasing 37.9% to 663.8 million. The DAO’s deposit-to-circulation ratio declined to 16.78%, suggesting users shifted capital out of passive staking amid market volatility.Fiber Network launched on mainnet in February 2025. It introduces privacy-preserving payment channels and atomic swaps that effectively allow CKB and RGB++ assets to enter into the Bitcoin Lightning Network.CKB Eco Fund hosted the inaugural Rock Web5 Hackathon. The event featured open-source applications such as an AI content curator, a DAO onboarding system, and a gamified education platform.
Primer
Nervos Network aims to expand on Bitcoin’s core technological primitives with Common Knowledge Base (CKB), a scalable Layer-1 blockchain that enables Layer-2 support for Bitcoin. CKB employs a Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism like Bitcoin but generalizes Bitcoin’s limited UTXO model and scripting capabilities by allowing more flexible data storage and verification. To improve Bitcoin’s arbitrary programming limitations, Nervos Network leverages a custom Cell Model for state storage and a virtual machine (CKB-VM) for transaction execution.
The cell model is core to CKB’s data structure and features a dual script model that allows any data to be stored and verified onchain. CKB-VM is CKB’s execution engine for running smart contracts and decentralized applications. The VM utilizes the RISC-V instruction set, a flexible and simple open-source hardware architecture set (ISA) that supports multiple programming languages, including popular ones like C and Rust.
Launched on mainnet in November 2019, Nervos Network has since evolved into one of the few independent blockchains scaling Bitcoin. Nervos scales Bitcoin through RGB++, an asset issuance protocol inspired by the RGB protocol. RGB++ allows users to issue assets on Bitcoin’s mainnet that are mapped to CKB cells through isomorphic binding. Although CKB serves as the data storage and verification layer for RGB++ assets and transactions, these assets inherit Bitcoin security. That is, the assets cannot be double-spent as each asset is mapped to a UTXO on Bitcoin.
Nervos aims to improve Bitcoin’s programmability with the RGB++ Layer, an extension of the RGB++ protocol that enables RGB++ assets to be mapped across other UTXO blockchains. The RGB++ layer serves as the smart contract and interoperability layer for RGB++ assets, enabling developers to build and deploy decentralized applications with enhanced programmability and flexibility on UTXO-based chains. Building on this foundation, Nervos has also launched Fiber Network, a Lightning Network-compatible payment channel network that extends CKB’s capabilities with fast, low-cost multi-token payments while maintaining seamless interoperability with Bitcoin’s payment infrastructure.
For a full primer on Nervos, refer to our Initiation of Coverage report.
Key Metrics
Financial Analysis
CKByte (CKB) is the native token of Nervos Network, used to maintain the network’s security and incentivize efficient data storage. Specifically, CKB is employed to (i) grant tokenholders data storage rights, (ii) settle network transaction fees, and (iii) distribute block rewards to miners for securing the network.
Market Capitalization and Token Price
CKB’s price declined by 58.9% in Q1, falling from $0.011 to $0.0047 by the end of March. Circulating market capitalization dropped in tandem and decreased 58.2% QoQ to around $216.4 million. As a result, CKB’s market cap ranking slid from 150 to 165 during the quarter. This drawdown was partially influenced by broader industry dynamics, evidenced by a 28.0% QoQ decline in the total market capitalization of altcoins.
Secondary Issuance
Nervos CKB addresses state bloat through a token-based rent model. Users are required to lock CKB to store data onchain, and these locked tokens are subject to dilution through an annual inflation mechanism known as secondary issuance. Rather than charging fees directly, 1.344 billion CKB tokens are minted per year and distributed to miners and Nervos DAO participants. The model ensures that users occupying blockchain state incur an indirect rent through inflation, as they do not receive a portion of the newly minted tokens. A portion of the issuance previously earmarked for the Treasury Fund is currently being burned, though it may be redirected to an onchain treasury in the future.
As of the end of Q1 2025, nearly 795 million CKB tokens have been distributed to miners since November 2019 as part of secondary issuance. Over 1.3 billion CKB have accrued to Nervos DAO depositors, who offset inflation by locking their tokens in the protocol. Meanwhile, around 5.1 billion CKB have been permanently burned.
Transaction Fees
On Nervos CKB, transaction fees are paid in CKB and distributed to miners along with block rewards from the network’s secondary issuance. Total fees in Q1 2025 amounted to approximately 9,300 CKB, which reflected an 18.5% decline from the prior quarter. Average daily fees followed a similar pattern, decreasing 21.2% in CKB to 103.38 or 49.1% in USD to $0.93.
Network Analysis
Transactions and New Addresses
Network activity on Nervos CKB slowed in Q1 2025, with average daily transactions declining 28.6% QoQ to approximately 25,300. While cumulative unique addresses continued to grow, rising 7.5% to around 5.95 million, new address creation decelerated. The network saw an average of about 4,600 new addresses per day, down 40.5% from the previous quarter.
Live Cells and Dead Cells
Nervos CKB stores its network state using a UTXO-based cell model. Cell activity is divided into live and dead cells. Live cells are available for future transactions, smart contract execution, and data storage. Dead cells, while no longer usable as transaction inputs, contain valuable data that can be accessed and referenced and still contribute to the blockchain’s history and data traceability.
Cell activity on the Nervos CKB network rose modestly in Q1 2025. The average daily number of live cells increased 4.8% QoQ to approximately 1.5 million, reversing a two-quarter trend of decline. Total dead cells continued to accumulate and grew 6.5% QoQ to about 78.3 million. This growth reflects ongoing usage of the network for transactions and data storage, which contribute to the evolving state history of the blockchain.
Security and Decentralization
As a Proof-of-Work (PoW) network, miners secure CKB by solving cryptographic puzzles to validate transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain. For every block mined, the miner receives that block’s full ‘base issuance’ reward and a portion of its ‘secondary issuance‘ reward. Miners also earn Proposal or Commit Rewards from transaction fees for processing transactions on the network.
The hashrate measures the total computational power dedicated to mining on a PoW network and is a key indicator of a network’s security against attacks by malicious actors. A higher hash rate indicates increased mining activity and network security. Difficulty measures how hard it is to mine new blocks and adjusts periodically to ensure that blocks are mined at a consistent rate.
In Q1 2025, Nervos CKB’s average hash rate declined 6.6% QoQ to approximately 394.4 PH/s. Mining difficulty adjusted accordingly, decreasing 1.8% to an average of 3.92 EH/s. The moderation in both metrics suggests a partial retracement following elevated mining activity in late 2024, aligning with broader cooling in network and market conditions during the quarter.
Meepo Hard Fork
During Q1 2025, the Nervos Network team announced that the Meepo Hardfork is scheduled for mainnet activation on July 1, 2025. This consensus-breaking upgrade will introduce CKB-VM V2 alongside several significant enhancements to CKB script development. Notable improvements include the “Spawn” syscall, optimized RPC peer management, and enhanced security through an upgraded version of OpenSSL. This upgrade has been live on testnet since October 2024 and is expected to significantly enhance the developer experience and efficiency of Nervos CKB.
Fiber Network Mainnet Launch
Fiber Network is a privacy-focused payment channel network that is compatible with Lightning Network and designed for decentralized, fast, and low-cost multi-token payments and peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions. Inspired by Bitcoin’s Lightning Network architecture, Fiber extends its capabilities by natively supporting stablecoin payments and atomic asset swaps to enable diverse BTCFi-aligned use cases.
In February 2025, Fiber Network officially launched on mainnet. The mainnet release deployed the first production-grade Fiber contract, initially supported by two bootnodes to facilitate initial connectivity and channel creation. Concurrently, an updated version of the contract was also released to testnet to enable ongoing experimentation and iterative improvements.
The mainnet launch included substantial enhancements and new features aimed at security, scalability, and usability. Notably, Fiber adopted Point Time-Locked Contracts (PTLC) as an advanced replacement for Hash Time-Locked Contracts (HTLC) to provide stronger privacy guarantees and improved cryptographic security.
Throughout Q1 2025, the Fiber Network team actively promoted developer engagement and ecosystem adoption by releasing detailed technical tutorials, demos, and code examples. These included open-sourced demonstration guides for testnet deployments and integration tutorials, notably highlighting real-time micropayment use cases in blockchain-based gaming. Developers released resources that showcased practical implementation scenarios, such as integrating fast and low-cost micropayments directly into gameplay mechanics to enable play-to-earn dynamics and multi-token economies.
The mainnet deployment supports multi-hop routing, which allows users to send payments through multiple nodes without needing a direct channel to the recipient and facilitates smoother cross-chain payments between Fiber Network and Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Furthermore, the watchtower service was operational upon launch. This security mechanism monitors channel states in real-time to enforce channel integrity by automatically penalizing fraudulent or outdated state commitments.
Ecosystem Analysis
Nervos DAO
CKB tokenholders are natively protected against the dilutive impact of the network’s ongoing issuance model via the Nervos DAO. By locking CKB token holdings into the Nervos DAO smart contract, users can earn rewards from secondary token issuance, ensuring their holdings are hedged against inflation. Depositors receive rewards at an APR equivalent to the annual secondary issuance rate, although the rate will continue to decrease as the total supply increases. While tokenholders with a minimum balance of 102 CKB tokens can deposit to the DAO anytime, withdrawals can only occur at the end of a 30-day deposit cycle.
NervDAO is a wallet interface that streamlines and simplifies the user experience for CKB’s Nervos DAO. It enables users to interact with and initiate deposits and withdrawals from the DAO using CKB-compatible wallets like Metamask, UTXO Global, and JoyID.
In Q1 2025, total deposits in Nervos DAO declined 3.4% QoQ to approximately 7.8 billion CKB. The deposit-to-circulation ratio also fell to 16.8% by the end of March. New deposits totaled around 663.8 million CKB during the quarter, marking a 37.9% decrease from Q4. The decline in new deposits follows a sharp rebound in late 2024 and may reflect a combination of reduced user activity, shifting incentives, and a reallocation of funds elsewhere in the ecosystem.
RGB++ activity on Nervos CKB continued to decline in Q1 2025, with the number of quarterly RGB++ transactions falling 78.6% QoQ to 436. Total newly mapped Bitcoin addresses dropped 59.3% to 123, and average daily Bitcoin transactions decreased 78.1% to just under five per day. Despite this slowdown in usage, the total number of RGB++ assets grew modestly by 4.20% to reach 596 by the end of the quarter, indicating continued development or asset issuance activity within the ecosystem.
Ecosystem Growth
RGB++ Layer ecosystem
The RGB++ Layer expands smart contract functionality beyond Nervos CKB and Bitcoin to include other UTXO-based blockchains, establishing CKB as the verification and data availability layer for the broader UTXO ecosystem. The total number of fungible RGB++ assets issued on CKB increased 4.2% QoQ from 572 to 596 by the end of Q1 2025.
Several projects in the RGB++ ecosystem saw notable developments during the quarter:
Infrastructure and Tooling
UTXO Global: Rolled out batch transfer functionality in its multisig wallet and improved token sync across its Chrome and Telegram interfaces. UTXO Global also integrated with CKB.Fi to enable users to mint and trade RGB++ meme tokens directly from user-generated social content.JoyID: Integrated offline Lightning payment support to enable users to receive BTC and RGB++ assets even while offline. The passkey-native wallet also surpassed 800,000 users during the quarter and announced onboarding support for the UTXO Stack Lightning Genesis Airdrop.Destbridge: Launched a stablecoin bridge supporting swaps between Ethereum-based USDT and USDI on Nervos. The bridge can be accessed via JoyID, UTXOSwap, and UTXO Global wallets, improving cross-chain liquidity access for the Nervos CKB and Fiber networks.
Gaming and Digital Objects
Nervape: Finalized manufacturing plans for NFC-enabled Nervape3x and hand-size figures, which will link physical collectibles to digital features. The product line includes ColorVibes models and mini figures, marking a step toward integrating physical merchandise with onchain identity and asset ownership.Omiga: Released a version update that enabled automatic CKB release upon DOB melting and duplicate asset warnings, enhancing liquidity and resource management for users while improving user safety on the platform.CKCat: Implemented a new task system and gameplay chapter to deepen user engagement. The project also received a grant from the CKB Eco Fund and launched Galxe campaigns to incentivize participation through onchain rewards.
SilentBerry Launches NFT Publishing Pilot
In Q1 2025, SilentBerry completed its first major publishing experiment with Saving Democracy, a book launched in NFT editions on Bitcoin using the RGB++ protocol. The platform allowed buyers to acquire digital copyright and authorized print rights, while also earning royalty shares based on NFT tiers. All Gold and Silver tier NFTs sold out within hours, and the first profit distribution to NFT holders via JoyID took place on January 11, 2025.
UTXO Stack Developments
UTXO Stack is a decentralized liquidity staking layer designed to unify Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and Nervos’ Fiber Network into a Hybrid Lightning Network. The protocol facilitates cross-chain stablecoin transactions and atomic swaps through a multi-token liquidity pool, aiming to improve routing efficiency and reduce onboarding costs for Lightning users. UTXO Stack will enable yield generation for liquidity providers and offer liquid staking derivatives for use in BTCFi protocols.
In Q1 2025, UTXO Stack announced the Lightning Genesis Airdrop, a three-part campaign that will distribute 5% of the upcoming UTXO token’s supply. The airdrop structure includes three events:
Lightning Airdrop: Retroactive allocation to active Bitcoin and Lightning Network users.User Incentive Program: A point-based engagement system leveraging JoyID wallet integrations and invite codes.Liquidity Boost: A staking program intended to seed initial liquidity across UTXO Stack’s decentralized pool by allowing users to become liquidity providers.
UTXO Stack collaborated with ecosystem partners, including Wizz Wallet, OLA, Lnfi, BEVM, BitBoom, B² Network, and YakiHonne to support the Lightning Genesis Airdrop and extend its reach across the Bitcoin and Lightning communities. These efforts aid in user onboarding and community engagement and aim to strengthen UTXO Stack’s position as a foundational liquidity layer for Lightning-integrated applications.
Events and Initiatives
Rock Web5 Hackathon
In March 2025, the CKB Eco Fund hosted the inaugural Rock Web5 Hackathon. The event highlighted the practical applications of Web5 technologies through workshops, collaborative development, and a Demo Day featuring working prototypes. Participants built dApps using tools such as RGB++ and Fiber Network to address real-world challenges in community engagement, governance, and education.
The following projects emerged from the event:
Neural Er Gou: An AI-powered assistant tailored for the Nervos CKB community. Neural Er Gou curates quality content across Nostr-based social platforms, distributes tokenized tips, and engages with users across Discord and Telegram. The project features a custom character design and was fully deployed ahead of Demo Day, including a real-time test event with the broader community.Constellar: A DAO-oriented governance interface that visualizes consensus through a “Values Star Map.” Key community interactions, such as likes and views, are rendered as constellations to enable transparent onboarding and collective goal alignment through sentiment mapping.Proof of Understanding: A verification system aiming to ensure users comprehend critical information before proceeding with actions such as DAO voting, DeFi participation, or responding to protocol updates. Users are required to rephrase opposing viewpoints in their own words, and AI models assess the accuracy of these responses.Anti Hero: A DAO onboarding application developed using AI tools by a non-technical team. The project includes wallet integration, a gamified Q&A system, and basic incentive mechanisms. It demonstrates the utility of AI-assisted development in lowering technical barriers and accelerating prototype delivery.Liangwa Room: An education initiative that aims to address disparities in access to educational resources in rural areas. The project records students’ creative work as dynamic NFTs and incentivizes participation through a star-based rewards system. Earned stars can then be exchanged for school supplies, introducing a gamified mechanism to support learning.CKB Eco Fund co-hosts Lightning Connect
CKB Eco Fund and UTXO Stack co-hosted Lightning Connect, a side event held during Consensus Hong Kong 2025 in February. The gathering brought together developers, entrepreneurs, and investors to examine the Bitcoin Lightning Network’s potential to support faster and more efficient global payments. The program included technical showcases, investor roundtables, and a keynote fireside chat.
The CKB Eco Fund served as a Platinum Sponsor at the 2025 Hong Kong Web3 Festival. As part of its participation, the fund co-hosted a Bitcoin-focused session that showcased ecosystem projects such as UTXO Stack and Nervape. It also hosted the Bitcoin Stage, featuring discussions on Bitcoin scalability, interoperability, and innovation, while maintaining a dedicated booth to engage with attendees and foster collaboration. Through its presence, the CKB Eco Fund highlighted its role in advancing Bitcoin-isomorphic technologies and strengthening connections within the global decentralized economy.
Closing Summary
Q1 2025 was a mixed quarter for Nervos Network, with continued infrastructure development offset by declines in network activity and token performance. CKB’s price fell 58.9% QoQ, while average daily transactions dropped 28.6%. Nervos DAO deposits and new address creation also slowed, reflecting reduced user engagement amid broader market headwinds. However, the launch of Fiber Network on mainnet marked a significant milestone, introducing privacy-preserving payments, stablecoin support, and multi-hop routing for BTCFi use cases.
Ecosystem developments remained active, particularly around Bitcoin-aligned infrastructure. UTXO Stack announced its upcoming Token Generation Event through a three-part Lightning Genesis Airdrop and formed partnerships across the CKB ecosystem. Meanwhile, JoyID surpassed 800,000 users and launched offline Lightning payment support. Projects like Nervape and SilentBerry demonstrated ongoing growth, while ecosystem events such as Rock Web5 Hackathon showcased the network’s expanding community and builder momentum.
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