Nervos Network

Nervos’s own contributor record identifies a division of labor: Jan Xie created the programming model and served as chief architect, co-founder Kevin Wang shaped the economic model, Ren Zhang created the NC-MAX consensus algorithm, and Xuejie Xiao authored central virtual-machine and script work. Their specifications describe a base layer meant to preserve agreed state, with heavier state generation left to clients and higher layers.

The Cell model gave that idea a concrete object. A cell is an immutable transaction output containing capacity, data and scripts. To change it, a transaction consumes the live cell and creates another. The lock script decides who may spend it; a type script can constrain what replacement state is valid. CKB-VM verifies those rules with RISC-V instructions.

The slogan “1 CKB = 1 byte” is easy to overread. In the specification, capacity is the size limit for the entire cell, including its scripts and metadata. One thousand CKBytes can support one or several cells totaling up to one thousand bytes, but a usable cell has overhead. The right is protocol capacity under a chosen script, not permanent ownership of a physical byte.

That accounting creates the storage charge indirectly. CKBytes occupied by state cannot also earn the Nervos DAO’s dilution offset. The matching share of secondary issuance goes to miners, who must keep that state available. Nothing is periodically subtracted from the cell; the cost is the reward its owner gives up while the state remains live.

The Lina mainnet arrived on 16 November 2019. Genesis allocated 33.6 billion CKB and immediately burned 8.4 billion. A separate base-issuance clock began rewarding proof-of-work miners at 4.2 billion CKB per year, halving roughly every four years until that schedule has issued 33.6 billion.

A second clock never has a terminal cap: 1.344 billion CKB of secondary issuance each year. The share corresponding to occupied capacity goes to miners; the share corresponding to DAO deposits compensates depositors; the remainder associated with liquid CKB is burned until a treasury is activated. This is why “33.6 billion cap” describes base issuance, not total supply.

Nervos DAO is a system script present from genesis. Depositors receive a proportional part of secondary issuance, leaving mainly exposure to the finite primary schedule. Exit first prepares a withdrawing cell; the deposit-anchored 180-epoch cycles determine its earliest unlock. The final transaction can be included at or after that time, not only on the boundary itself.

The name “DAO” can imply powers its deposit does not provide. Miners still produce blocks through NC-MAX; depositing does not make a validator, and the cited DAO RFC does not grant a general protocol ballot. RFC writers, client developers, miners, node operators and application script owners exercise different forms of control.

CKB2021 showed how change is scheduled. The rollout notice fixed epoch 5,414 and estimated that boundary at 10 May 2022 01:00 UTC; the epoch is the protocol trigger and the date was an estimate. The first incompatible edition introduced CKB-VM v1, a block extension field and consensus fixes. Application and node software had to become compatible with the new rules; token ownership alone did not install them.

The original economics assigned the liquid-capacity remainder to a future community treasury but instructed the network to burn it until agreement. That boundary remained visible years later. On 19 August 2026, the core development log said DAO Treasury & Voting design had advanced a batch-tally settlement solution while the work remained in design and proof-of-concept stages. The deposit mechanism operates; the broader treasury described by the economic design was still unfinished.